“Good grief,” he exclaimed. “Don’t you all have homes to go to?”
Gitta jumped up and rushed at him, bracelets jangling. Making good on his promise on the phone, she hugged him so tightly that all of the bruises and injuries he had sustained over the past day and a half protested with dull pain.
“Ouch!” he said, and Gitta took a concerned step back. He smiled at her. “Gotcha!”
She laughed and took a playful swing at him. “Idiot!”
“I love you too!” With a groan, he sank into a chair that Shannon pushed toward him. His eyes came to rest on Paul’s empty spot. “Why are all of you still here?”
“Believe me, I sent them all home to sleep,” Tromsdorff declared. “But none of us wanted to go quite yet. We wanted to first find out how you were doing. Besides, we thought you might like to hear what we found out.”
Faris’s eyes traveled along the row of tired faces. Each of them had achieved the impossible over the previous hours. A warm feeling of belonging started to glow inside him, lessening the blow of Paul’s death just a little. He gave a half smile. “Okay. Out with it!”
It was Shannon who started. “I don’t think we need to spend much more time talking about Hesse, do we?” And yet she did so anyway. “I looked into his mother, Ludmilla Mechow. She was a conservative Catholic, a religious bigot of sorts. She could never make her peace with Hesse’s existence. When he was five, he was taken into a children’s home. Over the course of his childhood, his greatest wish was to have a real family. When his lover was killed in Afghanistan, he lost his grip on reality. However the catalyst for his actions was Ludmilla’s death in the bombing at the Klersch Museum. As a result of her death, he learned about his father, contacted him, and, tragically, found in him a much worse fanatic than his mother had been.” She paused and silently studied Faris for a moment. “Hesse was a highly manipulative character. The video he made of Alexander underneath the cross indicated that. He took pleasure in having his half-brother under his complete control. And hey! He stuck the electrodes onto himself so that you would blame yourself for setting off the bombs.”
“Why did he make the video?” Faris asked.
“He obviously wanted to make a statement to the tune of ‘Look at all the bad things religions do!’”
“Did Ellwanger really murder his wife? Hesse hinted at that.”
Tromsdorff nodded. “They’ve found her body. She was buried under a flower bed in his allotment garden. We are looking into the motive, but she had probably threatened to take Alexander away from him at some point. At least, that’s what Alexander said on the video.”
“Jesus Christ!” Shannon murmured. “When I think about how Alexander must have felt to be caught in that harsh spotlight that Hesse pointed at him. He seems to have thought that it was some kind of angelic aura.”
For a moment, the team members were wrapped in their own thoughts. “I’d be interested to know if he gave Alexander any kind of narcotics, to make him easier to manipulate.”
It was possible, Faris thought. He had seen Alexander in the video, and the young man had definitely not been right in the head. But right now there was something else that interested Faris more than the question about drugs.
“How is Werner Ellwanger doing?” he asked.
“He’s alive, and he will be tried for the murder of his wife, as well as his abuse of Alexander.” Shannon sounded satisfied.
Faris nodded. “Good!” And then something totally different crossed his mind. Laura. He pulled out his phone. During the long hours of his interviews, he had turned it off. He turned it back on now and waited for a moment to see if he had missed any calls.
Several had come in, but none from Laura. His sister Anisah had called him, though. His fellow officers had contacted his family to assure them that Faris was safe. He would discuss everything else with Anisah and the others later on.
Laura, on the other hand …
“The transmitter that Hesse was holding …” he began, but he couldn’t finish the question that was burning in his mind.
However Tromsdorff understood. He nodded. “The officers told me that it would have detonated the glow stick he had left for Lilly to find.”
Faris lowered his head. “Okay,” he whispered. If he hadn’t fired, Lilly would now be dead. And yet, he wasn’t sure that this knowledge would make it easier for him to work through everything that had happened. He simply couldn’t get the image of Niklas dying out of his mind. That, and one other image. His memory of the earlier Niklas – the Niklas who had been full of vigor and idealism.
Faris tried to rub the weariness out of his burning eyes. When he had been taken to Keithstraße for questioning, his colleagues assured him that Laura was doing well. That was all he needed to do. When she felt a need to talk to him about what had happened, she would reach out to him. And yet, he was certain that this would never happen. He held back a sigh and stuck his phone back into his pocket.
For a moment, his thoughts flashed to Ira Jensen. “How could Hesse talk to me simultaneously on two different lines?” he asked. He was thinking about how he had driven to the internet café. He had been talking with the caller, while on his burner phone he had warned Hesse about his own bomb. For the first time, he realized how brilliant the reporter’s gambit had been.
Ben cleared his throat. “Technically, that wasn’t difficult. For example, there are programs that can imitate your voice when you input words via a keyboard. Hesse was a journalist. He could easily type and chat with you at the same time.”
“We have now finished analyzing the recordings of the various calls,” Tromsdorff interjected. “When you were en route to the café, Hesse’s replies were all delayed, just slightly. We would’ve picked up on that, if we’d known what we were looking for.”
“We should’ve realized it was him earlier than we did,” Faris said quietly. He was steeling himself against the impending onset of guilt. Today he hadn’t pressed the button, but he had come awfully close to it.
For a long time, nobody in the room said anything, but then the others started to discuss Hesse’s psyche. Shannon was still full of vim and vigor and looked as though she wanted to start writing a book about the case right away.
Faris envied her strength.
He could hardly follow the others’ conversation, and at some point, their voices faded into the distance, sounding as if they were coming out of a tin bucket.
Finally, Tromsdorff ordered him to get his sorry ass over to the hospital.
He protested. “If I have to see or hear even one more heart monitor today, I’ll …” He didn’t finish the sentence … blow my brains out was what he has been about to say, but this seemed inappropriate in the circumstances.
Tromsdorff sighed. “You old jackass!” he bellowed, but cheerfully. “Then at least go home and rest up!”
*
The sheets in the hotel room were the color of lilacs, as was the carpet. But Jenny didn’t care about that. She sank back into the clean pillow and listened to the pattering of the shower behind the bathroom door.
Her entire body felt tingly with excitement and anticipation, and she savored that feeling, which was all the stronger because she had just – barely – escaped a terrible catastrophe
After the video had restarted up on the large screen, the police officers had been very upset. Absolute panic had appeared in the eyes of the young officer standing next to Jenny.
But then … nothing happened. The young officer had looked unbelievably relieved, and after a few minutes, returned to his task of shooing people out of the stadium and relieving them of their glow sticks.
Rumors had spread rapidly through the stadium. Everyone suspected that a bomb attack had just been prevented.
The late-night service and ecumenical Eucharist had been canceled. As an alternative, Dennis took the girls to a really cool restaurant on Ku’damm. After a little while, Pia had discreetly left, and they had finally made their way to the hot
el room that Dennis had reserved.
A smile flashed across Jenny’s face. Dennis turned off the water in the bathroom, and he stepped into the room with only a towel wrapped around his waist. The black winged tattoo on his arm looked mysterious. With a smile, Jenny rolled over onto her side and propped her head up on her hand.
It had been an exciting day.
And it would be an even more exciting night.
*
The contrast between the tension of the previous hours and the unbearable silence in his small apartment was too much for him. Faris showered, then paced back and forth in his living room like a prisoner for half an hour. He called Anisah and listened for several minutes to her worried, yet relieved, barrage of words, before he managed to assure her that everything was fine with him. It took him quite a bit of effort to prevent her from immediately coming over to his apartment to take care of him.
A few minutes after hanging up, he suspected that he had made a wrong call on that. The desire to beat his fists to a bloody pulp against his walls grew and grew, and he finally couldn’t take it anymore. He grabbed his jacket and rushed out of his apartment.
For some time, he wandered aimlessly through Berlin, and he eventually came to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. A pedestrian, who almost ran into him, gave him a wide berth and shot him a disgruntled look, though he kept all thoughts to himself after catching sight of the look on Faris’s face. Faris watched him round the next building, and he imagined that this man was returning home to his wife and kids. Trying not to sigh, he glanced at his watch.
The service at the Olympic Stadium had been scheduled to start right about now. Had all this negatively impacted the ecumenical effort? He had no idea, nor did he really care. Not at the moment.
He resumed his walk but stopped again before too long. His eyes fell on a small Italian restaurant that was still fairly full despite the lateness of the hour.
I have a friend. He could hear Ira’s voice in his head. Her father owns a trattoria in Charlottenburg.
Da Rossi was printed on the sign over the door.
Faris had to smile. Had his subconscious brought him here? He studied the cozy taproom through the window. About half of the red-checkered tables were occupied. He smelled pizza and garlic, and Faris suddenly noticed that he was hungry. Ira’s toast this morning was the only thing he had eaten during the past forty hours.
He patted his inside jacket pocket. He had his wallet with him.
After brief deliberation, he stepped inside the small restaurant. A young woman with a side ponytail greeted him cheerfully. “Table for two?” she asked. Jasmin, he assumed. He shook his head. “I’m alone.”
She looked around, thinking. A short flight of steps to the left of the entrance led up to another level. There were four tables up there, and no one was sitting at them. Faris felt a little stab of disappointment. Had he actually hoped to run into Ira here?
He followed the young woman up the steps to one of the tables. “I’ll bring you a menu right away,” she said. “Would you like to order something to drink?” A waist-high wall separated this part of the restaurant from the rest of it and gave this section a cozy, secluded feeling. A woman’s jacket was draped over one of the chairs at the adjacent table, but no purse was in sight. Obviously, the woman who was sitting up here had stepped into the restroom. A half-drunk glass of red wine was on the table.
Faris stared at it for a moment, thinking quickly. “Bring me a glass of wine please,” he said.
“Dry?”
He had no idea if he liked dry wines. He didn’t know if he even liked wine at all, but he nodded.
The young woman vanished. A server appeared shortly afterwards, bringing him his order. He took the glass and stared into the dark red, shimmering liquid, hesitant to try it.
“I thought you didn’t drink alcohol,” a familiar voice suddenly said.
Faris looked up from his glass. Ira was standing next to him. She looked fresh and calm, like someone you could lean on. He resisted the urge to jump up and wrap his arms around her.
“A pastor once told me that in her faith wine represented belonging,” he replied.
“Sounds like a smart woman.” She didn’t ask if he minded her joining him, but simply moved her glass over from the adjacent table. She then pulled out the second chair at his table and sat down. She toasted Faris, but didn’t drink. “What brought you here?” A rosy flush spread across her cheeks. “Oh God!” she exclaimed. “Don’t tell me you found the business card!”
Faris looked at her in bewilderment. “Which business card?” He didn’t know anything about a business card.
“I left you a …” She quickly waved this off. “It’s okay!” She raised her glass slightly. Relief was written across her face, and the flush on her cheeks slowly faded.
He clinked his glass against hers and took a sip. The wine trickled, warm and strangely soothing, down his throat. He felt as if he needed to say something smart.
“Maybe it was your God who brought me here,” he murmured.
She gazed at him for a long moment before shaking her head. “Or fate.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
She shrugged and set her glass carefully onto the checkered tablecloth. “God. Fate. Maybe we no longer need constructs like these, after what we went through today.”
He didn’t know what to say to this. He considered his options. “I’m glad you’re here,” he admitted.
Ira was quiet for a moment. “Shouldn’t you be at home, resting from your concussion?” She started to spin her glass on the table and suddenly looked self-conscious.
“I tried.”
“For how long?”
A smile was making its way up to his face. He could feel it. It felt as warm as the wine in his stomach. “An eternity! Half an hour.”
She laughed, and it was good to see her do it. He took another sip.
“You saved the city from a terrible catastrophe today,” she said. “Will you be publicly thanked for this?”
He shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. My boss wants to close the unit I work for.”
“You aren’t serious!” Ira’s eyes widened. She had very expressive eyes.
“Could we talk about something else?” he asked. “I actually came in here to forget about all that for a while.”
Ira gave this some thought, and he felt like she was on the verge of pointing out to him how destructive it was to suppress things. But she didn’t, and he was grateful for that.
Instead she pointed at his wrist with a smile. “You took off the bracelet.”
Surprised, he followed her gaze. He had. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he felt the worn leather on the bracelet. At some point during his aimless walk through the city, he must have removed it. His thoughts flew briefly to Laura.
“That’s a shame!” Ira said. “I liked it.”
He shrugged. Someday, he thought, I might tell her the truth about what’s printed on it.
Forty Hours: A breath-taking thriller Page 32