Less than twenty-four hours later, Britta’s sitting in a train again, this one bound for Leipzig. It’s been raining buckets since morning. The world outside is a gray blur, undifferentiated except for the red warning lights of the wind turbines, which blink spookily through the haze. Contrary to her usual custom of dressing up to visit clients, Britta’s wearing sturdy shoes, jeans, and a waterproof jacket with a hood; after all, she has to figure on spending some time outdoors. The train car smells of wet umbrellas and damp clothes, of drying hair and soaked shoes. The other passengers look more real today, less like actors impersonating people and more like genuine living beings, maybe because they’re a little cold, maybe because they’re sharing the contentment of knowing that others are worse off than they are, for example all those who are on foot right now, not hurtling through sheets of water in a dry, cozy train.
Shortly before the train departed, Babak called her and tried again to dissuade her from making the trip.
“This dashing around from place to place isn’t smart,” he said.
“Neither is calling a cell phone number,” she replied.
He simply hung up on her. First time ever. Britta’s not used to quarreling with Babak. The world feels wrong, like a tilted picture. In the group of four seats diagonally across the aisle from her, an elderly man is reading something on his smartphone to his wife. Apparently plans are afoot to raise the five percent electoral threshold for political parties to fifteen percent in order to make the parliament operate more efficiently. When the man begins to explain the advantages of this idea, Britta plugs her earbuds into her ears.
She watches the raindrops run a horizontal race across the window and thinks about Babak. Her trips to Leipzig always make her think about Babak, for Leipzig is the city where they met.
The first time she saw Babak, he was standing at the railing of an S-Bahn bridge in Leipzig. It was dark; the orange light from a streetlamp illuminated his massive body, his slumping shoulders and bent back. Britta was wearing running shoes, a tight-fitting sports outfit, and a fitness armband that displayed her vital statistics. She was crossing the bridge, following the route she usually took to Clara-Zetkin Park, where she would go at night to jog the boredom of her business administration courses out of her bones. It was autumn, and Germany was about to win the World Cup. The tsunami of refugees hadn’t started yet, the United Kingdom hadn’t left the European Union, unemployment and interest rates were at historically low levels. Germany was the most fortunate country in the world, without even noticing the fact.
There was something peculiar about the way Babak was staring down at the tracks. He was there again the next evening, and also the evenings after that. More than once, the mere sight of him made her furious. She considered taking another way into the park, but that would have meant running for a stretch along a main thoroughfare, an ordeal she hadn’t the slightest desire to undergo. On the fifth night, she stopped directly behind Babak and addressed him: “Jump or walk away, whichever you want, just don’t always be standing around here like that.”
Babak cringed as though he’d been struck.
When Britta took off again, he simply went with her. She wanted to run; he was as slow as a snail. She adjusted to his pace without knowing why. Sprinting off and leaving him was somehow impossible. They trotted along side by side, two mismatched ramblers on their way through the night.
Clara-Zetkin Park already smelled like winter; although it was only the beginning of November, the weather was pretty cold. Britta, who was wearing thin jogging gear, started shivering. Babak took off his jacket and gave it to her without even looking in her direction. All he had on underneath was a T-shirt. The jacket smelled like cheap detergent and surely had not been fumigated for a very long time. Nevertheless, it was fun to wear—like a giant, protective tent.
The old-fashioned streetlights on the avenue, lined with large plane trees, cast the joggers’ shadows in front of them and made those shadows shrink, grow, overtake themselves, and fall behind again. The moon painted white puddles on the park’s lawns. The paths crunched under their feet; psychotic blackbirds sang at the illuminated intersections. All at once, Babak began to speak. The words flowed out of him, as though someone had removed a stopper.
As a small child, he had come with his parents to Germany, where his father, who actually was a physician, opened a greengrocer’s shop, while his mother took care of the household and the children. Ever since God rescued them from the war, his parents had grown increasingly devout. They were always taking Babak to the mosque, where he was taught that love between men is a sin. At some point, he’d built himself a computer, and from then on, he’d lived in worlds that no one else understood.
A week ago, his eldest brother, Murad, had caught him visiting a gay dating platform on the Internet. Fearing any further contact with his brother, Babak had been spending half the days and nights wandering the streets. He avoided his mother, and he stopped showing up for work in the greengrocery because he didn’t know what Murad had told their father.
Babak said he had no idea what to do with his shitty life, and no idea what to do with himself, a fat, queer nerd with a high school diploma who was neither a German in Germany nor an Iraqi in Iraq, and who had nothing, no money, no car, no friends, not even any interest in girls.
Britta let him talk. They crossed through the park and reached Gottschedstrasse, a street that featured one bar after another. Even in Babak’s jacket, Britta had started to feel cold again, and so she opened the first door they came to and dived into warmth, light, and a confusion of voices. They found an open table for two and sat down. Britta ordered a green tea for herself and a beer for Babak.
“I don’t drink alcohol,” he said.
“Drink,” said Britta, and Babak obeyed.
“So,” she said, holding the hot teacup with both hands, “enough blathering.”
Babak kept quiet and looked at her.
“No prospects, no identity, no money, and nobody to fuck,” she said. “All ego-related stuff. Not valid reasons for making a final exit.”
“Who says I want to kill myself?”
“I don’t care whether you jump off the bridge or not. But if you do, then please do it with some dignity.”
Babak, looking confused, took a sip of his beer. “I should kill myself, but you want me to please make sure it’s done for the right reasons?”
“And done in the right way.”
They looked at each other. Neither of them knew whether Britta was speaking in earnest.
“Consider for a minute,” she began again, placing her hand on his forearm. “Such a suicide gives you incredible power. You can do things you will never be punished for. For a brief period of time, you can be whoever you want and do whatever you like. You’re the king of the world. The most dangerous weapon there is.”
As a matter of fact, Britta herself didn’t know exactly what she was saying and why. It was as though she were holding the corner of something in her hands and pulling on it without any idea of what she was about to get a look at.
“You’re pretty crazy.” Babak shook his head but didn’t protest when she ordered him a second beer. He drank it fast and ordered the third himself.
“So in your opinion, what should I do?”
Britta shrugged.
“Become a jihadi. You’re an Arab, right?”
“Those boys are too crass for me.”
“Separatism? Ecology? Occupy?”
“Nah.”
“Maybe you just want to go back to your old school and shoot it up?”
“Most certainly not.”
“You’re a tough one.”
Now they both had to laugh.
“So it’s jihad, then.” Britta leaned far back in her chair. “People say they pay really well.”
“I could use some money. I’d leave it to my mother. Then she could buy a dishwasher.”
“You don’t have a dishwasher?”
“And a decent vacuum cleaner. And a good food processor, a Thermomix. Maybe even her own car. And new clothes from the shop where she always stands in front of the window but never goes in. I’d put the money into an account that only she could access. And I’d leave a will forbidding her to give the money to my father or Murad. She wouldn’t dare disregard my last wishes. She’d have to buy all that stuff, because I’d be ordering her to buy it from beyond the grave.”
When Babak smiled, you could just make out his real facial features under the fat. Again they looked at each other, for a long time, and in the end Britta recognized something in his eyes. An ache, a deep sadness, a loss; it seemed somehow familiar to her.
“I think I have an idea,” said Britta.
“What’s your name, anyway?” said Babak.
A conductor asking to see her ticket startles Britta out of her thoughts. The retiree in the quartet of seats across from her complains that it’s too cold in the train, and the conductor promises to turn the heat up. After he’s gone, the open car calms down, like water briefly churned up by the passage of a motorboat. The passengers sink back into their respective activities; Britta returns to Molly Richter and thinks that there would be even more violence in the world, a lot more, if headphones had never been invented.
They met again on the succeeding evenings. Britta drank green tea; Babak ordered his beers himself, even though she had to keep on paying for them. At the end of two weeks, the concept was in place, and then the work began.
According to statistics, in Germany alone around ten thousand people commit suicide every year, three-quarters of them men, and more than half by hanging. Babak set about developing an algorithm that—with the help of data mining, profiling, and stylometrics—would be capable of fishing for and identifying suitable persons on the Internet. At the same time, Britta created a series of behavioral and psychological tests, with the help of which she could thoroughly evaluate the candidates’ will to suicide. A healing practice for suicide prevention. The majority of their clients would be released back into life, forever cured of suicidal thoughts through a hard confrontation with their own death wish. A few incorrigibles would remain. People who in any event wanted to die, one way or another. These would be passed on to organizations that would know what to do with them. That would give them a goal, a sense, something worth dying for. And would pay a good price for them. Clients could leave their share of the fee to a loved one if they wished.
Britta and Babak amused themselves by trying out names for their business—R.A.M., Rent-a-Martyr, or T’n’T, Therapy and Terror—and by drawing logos on beer coasters and napkins. It was Babak who came up with the name that stuck: The Bridge.
Britta stopped taking her business administration courses and started studying to become a Heilpraktikerin, a healing professional. She learned how eye movement can be used to overcome traumas; how human despair can be reduced to self-beliefs, negative or otherwise, that can then be worked on; how the application of pressure to specific body parts and the recitation of mantras can increase self-confidence. None of this was needed for her later work. During her preparations for the final examinations, the beta version of Babak’s algorithm spat out the first names. Britta contacted them and wrote invitations, repeated two or three times when necessary, in which she substantiated her credentials with references forged by Babak. She termed initiating contact this way “proactive client recruitment” and designated what she was offering as a “method of confrontation.” Not all the targeted persons reacted; however, a great many of them did, and of those responders, a smaller number declared themselves prepared to come in for a first interview. Britta didn’t ask for a fee, but candidates were required to bear their own travel expenses. Should they be satisfied with The Bridge’s work, they had the option of paying a sum of their choosing.
Some clients left the program after a short time and disappeared, never to be seen again. Others were officially discharged after the fourth, fifth, or seventh stage of the evaluation. Those who had been cured paid fees. Many clients were so filled with gratitude for their positive outcomes that they dug deep into their pockets.
The first candidate to pass through all the evaluation stages was Dirk, a pedophile tired of living with his inclinations. Britta and Babak fished him out of a suicide forum, where he’d been wrangling for months over the question of what would be the surest way to leave the world. Right from the start, Beta-Lassie had assigned him a coefficient of 10.4, the best result they’d obtained so far. Dirk was so set in his purpose that he positively flew through the evaluation process, ending with a score over 11, which according to The Bridge’s bylaws was more than sufficient.
When Britta offered to work out all the suicide logistics for him—settling of personal affairs, planning and execution of the act itself with a one hundred percent guarantee of success, middle-class funeral and burial arrangements—and moreover suggested the possibility that he could end his life in the service of a higher goal, he wept for his good fortune. She placed him with Green Power, an environmental organization convinced that the planet would be significantly better-off without people. The organization had chiefly made its mark through an ongoing series of spectacular operations against the whaling industry.
Green Power proved to be enthusiastic about The Bridge’s new business model, and Dirk was enthusiastic about the idea of sacrificing himself for the survival of the whales. An agreement was reached in the twinkling of an eye, and after everything was arranged, Britta and Babak had but one thing to do: wait.
Babak, who had already lost more than forty pounds while programming Lassie, now lost an additional six or so. Britta stopped drinking green tea when the caffeine jitters in her hands moved to her arms. At last, news portals began reporting the breaking headline: an environmental activist group classified as a terrorist organization had sunk a Norwegian whaling vessel on the high seas; one of the activists had died in the attack. The YouTube video that Green Power posted shortly afterward showed a rubber dinghy racing at top speed toward the gigantic whaling ship and then exploding immediately in front of the bow. Within a few hours, the clip recorded a million views. Britta and Babak celebrated late into the night.
Dirk had insisted that The Bridge should receive not just the agreed share but the entire sum paid by Green Power for the operation. Furthermore, he’d bequeathed his not inconsiderable personal fortune to Britta and Babak and left behind a letter in which he expressed deep gratitude and the hope that their commitment, in equal measure passionate and professional, would work to the benefit of many other people in the future. With this money, Britta and Babak moved to Braunschweig, leased the commercial unit in the Kurt Schumacher Passage, and bought Lassie her first large server.
Since that first operation, Britta has taken great pleasure in her work. She interacts with many people, lives an independent life, and does a great deal of good. The rescue of potential suicides constitutes by far the lion’s share of her activity. In the instances when The Bridge procures suicide attackers for other entities, it adheres to a strict code—limited number of victims, careful avoidance of escalation, no collateral damage. Its clients have gradually adjusted to these conditions, and by now there’s practically no one else organizing such operations; collaboration with The Bridge is the only way. Since the triumph of the CCC, terrorist organizations have grown weaker, their goals have lost their magnetic appeal, and they themselves are scarcely still capable of recruiting martyrs. As the first and thus far only terrorist service provider in the Federal Republic, The Bridge has pacified and stabilized the sector. The company takes great care to keep the sense of imminent threat, a feeling that every society needs, at the proper level. And it has made Britta and Babak fairly rich.
In the end, though, it’s something else that fills Britta with pride and joy. Since the founding of The Bridge, she has lived in complete harmony with the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. If she didn’t feel sick so often, she’d probably call herself a lucky woman.