A second ago, the square lay silent in the light of the streetlamps, there was a silvery gleam of moisture on the stones, and the steel struts of a security fence glinted in the background. Now a man comes into the picture. He strides calmly across the paved surface, a tall, slender figure dressed in black, his face uncovered but hard to recognize in the half-light. His springy step is evidence of an exercise regimen; his upper body is broad, actually too broad, because of the explosive vest under his jacket. The man walks along the fence a short distance until he reaches the gate. Next to the locked entrance is a narrowly enclosed turnstile for pedestrian traffic. A flag is waving on the gatepost, and under it a brass plate is prominently displayed. Half-moon and star.
It wasn’t easy to find the right assignment for Marquardt. In his meticulous way, he found arguments against every proposed situation and lapsed again and again into tedious monologues that nearly drove Britta mad. Until, in a moment of sudden inspiration, the PKK occurred to her. Marquardt has no real interest in Kurdish issues, but the AKP’s slapdash ways disturb him. Britta’s glad, because she doesn’t often have anything to offer the PKK. The attention that a non-Kurd carrying out an anti-AKP operation will attract provides a forceful argument in price negotiations. In the early morning hours, the square in front of the consulate is deserted but under video surveillance, and before Marquardt ignites the bomb, he’ll deliver a brief, prepared speech to the cameras.
Marquardt toes an imaginary line a few steps from the entrance; they’ve studied the area and divided it into grid squares, and the space where he’s stopped marks the intersection of the axes of several cameras. In all probability, this is the moment when a watchman sitting in front of some monitor raises his weary head. The delivery of the message will take thirty-two seconds, after which Marquardt will move a little closer to the portal, in order to cause the greatest possible damage.
Just as he’s turning his eyes toward one of the surveillance cameras, the van drives up: a silver Mercedes Vito, no license plates. It brakes right next to Marquardt; the side door slides open. Within fractions of a second, two masked men in black combat outfits have dragged him inside the vehicle. The Vito’s tires squeal as it accelerates into a tight curve and speeds out of the picture.
“Mama!”
“Just wait a minute,” Britta calls. Before she clicks the next video stream on her tablet, she puts the headphones over her ears and turns down the sound; things are likely to get a bit loud.
The perspective has changed, and now the frame displays a stark image detail from inside the van. Marquardt’s brightly lit face fills the screen; Bernd is shining a Maglite in his eyes. His mouth is contorted, probably because Udo’s pulling his head back by the hair.
“Now we’ve got you, you prick!” Bernd screams, close to the microphone. Britta turns the volume down to the minimum. “No more holy war for you!”
“I’m not a jihadi,” Marquardt pants. There’s the sound of a blow, and his face disappears from the screen. When he appears again, he’s coughing and spitting. The sputum looks as though it contains some vomit.
“You speak only when you’re asked a question,” screams Bernd.
“Who sent you?” asks Udo, in a calm, friendly voice. The two men form a highly experienced team, they’ve been doing this for years, and they do it quite well.
“That’s none of your business,” Marquardt answers, as soon as his mouth is clear. After the following blow, it takes them a little longer to straighten him up again.
“We’re letting you keep your tongue only so you can talk!” Bernd bellows.
“Do us all a favor and make it quick,” Udo entreats.
It will go on like this for a while longer, so Britta fast-forwards a little.
“Mama! Maa-maa!!!”
“Wait a minute, both of you.”
“We have a quesss-tion!”
“Ask me,” says Janina, who’s behind the steering wheel of the VW bus. “Your mama has to work a little longer.”
“But you should both listen.”
“I won’t be much longer.” Britta holds the tablet so that no one but her can see the display screen and looks for the place where the weapon comes into play.
Marquardt’s kneeling on the floor, already just about done, even though barely a trace of violence is visible on his face. Udo and Bernd are pros. Apart from Step 12, Britta has nothing to do with them—she doesn’t even know their real names. She suspects that they’re former policemen who work for some security company and occasionally earn some extra income from The Bridge. They’re reliable, tidy, discreet. Britta knows she can absolutely trust them. On the screen, Bernd is pressing a Glock against Marquardt’s temple.
“You didn’t acquire your boom-boom vest and all this other shit by yourself,” Ugo says, off camera. “Who helped you? We want names.”
“Fuck you,” pants Marquardt, who has apparently lost his inclination to practice good manners.
Bernd, clenching his jaw, trembling with effort, presses the muzzle of the Glock against Marquardt’s head. “Then your time’s up,” he gasps out.
“My colleague is right,” says Udo’s voice. “Sorry as I am to say so. If you have nothing to offer, you’re worthless to us.”
“Biowaste,” Bernd adds. This is an expression he must be mighty proud of; in any case, he uses it every time.
“I’m going to count backward from five,” Udo explains. “When I reach zero, my colleague pulls the trigger. If you have second thoughts, raise your hand.”
Even before Udo starts counting, Marquardt begins to recite his PKK broadside. Kurdistan Freedom Hawks, revenge for the massacres committed by the AKP fascists. Britta is touched. Marquardt is using his last opportunity to carry out at least a part of his instructions. He speaks without faltering and stresses every word with the same meticulousness that characterizes his reports. He’s been getting on Britta’s nerves for weeks; now she’s starting to admire him.
While Marquardt’s speaking, Udo slowly counts from five to zero, Marquardt shuts his eyes, and Bernd squeezes the trigger. Nothing happens. A moment of shock ensues, and then Marquardt begins to howl. He keeps on howling while Bernd and Udo talk to him, trying to soothe him. Now they’re about to tell him that the evaluation comprises not twelve but thirteen steps, and that he’s just completed the last one. That it was all just an act. That they’ll take him back to the hotel, and that everything else he’ll learn from Britta.
Britta turns the tablet off. She doesn’t have to wait for Udo’s appraisal to know that Marquardt has passed with flying colors. She has seen stronger men break down whimpering and beg for their lives. In such cases, the candidates leave the program shortly before its completion and return to their daily routines. For the most part, The Bridge profits from outcomes of this sort as well. Candidates converted late in the process tend to express their gratitude for their cure by paying exceptionally high fees.
“Can you finally listen?” shouts Vera from the back seat.
“Yes, sweetie, I’m finished.” Britta stuffs the tablet into the knapsack between her feet and turns around in the passenger seat.
“What’s a ‘toff-tail’?” Cora asks quickly, while Vera resorts to angry grumbling. Apparently there was some kind of competition about who would ask the question.
“Not like that!” snaps Vera. “ ‘Molo-tail’!” Both girls are aflame with eagerness because they’re closing in on something they think is just for grown-ups.
“Molotov cocktail?” asks Britta.
“Exactly!” cries Vera. “What is that?”
“Something old-fashioned.”
“How do you know such a word?” asks Janina.
“From Mr. Meyer.” He’s Vera’s arithmetic teacher. “He said someone should go to Berlin and throw a Molotov cocktail at it.”
“Your teachers talk like that?”
“Only the older ones.”
“I see what he means.” Janina laughs.
“Don’t talk nonsense,” Britta says sharply.
Janina takes her eyes off the road and looks at her friend in surprise. “Haven’t you heard about the CCC’s latest plan? Efficiency Package Number Six: the introduction of midterm examinations in elementary school. Underachievers to be separated out early. An absurd idea.”
“Wha-a-a-at?” Vera and Cora yell, pleased with their own volume.
“There was a survey a few years ago,” says Britta. “People were asked what they’d do if they had to choose between their right to vote and their washing machine.”
“What was the result?”
“Sixty-seven percent chose the washing machine. Fifteen percent were undecided.”
“So only eighteen percent wanted the vote.”
“You’re good at doing arithmetic in your head.” Britta hears how caustic she sounds. “The CCC didn’t just come out of nowhere. If people want to throw Molotov cocktails, then maybe they should throw them at other people.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Janina turns her head again and looks inquisitively at Britta. “Since when do you get worked up about politics?”
“Pull in there.” She indicates the entrance to a filling station.
At the cash register, she asks for a card phone. Since there aren’t any for sale—there never are—the attendant offers her his cell; so far, this ruse has worked every time.
She dials a number she knows by heart and leaves a brief voice mail message: the candidate is available and can be booked starting next week. She gives the attendant a euro for the call, buys four lollipops in different flavors, and goes back to the car, where she shoos Janina out of the driver’s seat.
While Britta sits in silence and drives, Janina goes on about the sixth Efficiency Package, which includes the downsizing of the school system, the so-called judicial reform, and the expansion of governmental authority. All the same, Britta’s pretty sure Janina would have opted for the washing machine too. In her friend’s mouth, the CCC’s plans sound like the side effects of a creeping natural disaster that one watches with disgusted fascination but can do nothing at all to stop. Britta would very much like to tell her, once and for all, to keep her trap shut. And all throughout Janina’s chatter, Britta’s mind is drawn back to Julietta’s words: “the CCC assholes,” and “Unlike you, I have principles.”
On the day after the conversation at Good Times, Britta made another trip to Leipzig. She walked around the city for hours and then eventually rented a bicycle. She checked all the parks, sought out all the trash bins, rode to shopping centers, S-Bahn stations, and the university’s various properties. Not a trace of G. Flossen anywhere. It wasn’t the first time she’d been unable to track him down, but in this case the futility of her search causes her great distress. She can’t afford any delay. And should Flossen remain impossible to find—because he’s on a journey around the world, because he’s lying in a hospital bed, because he’s resigned from Green Power—Britta and Julietta are back at the beginning.
By the time they reach Wiebüttel, she’s finished the lollipop and gotten a grip on herself. Janina, for her part, is worn-out from talking; the bored girls in the back droop in their seats.
As they turn into the little village, Britta checks her rearview mirror for the umpteenth time. No white Hilux in sight. For a guardian angel, Hatz hasn’t been particularly present lately.
With an elegant twirl of the steering wheel, Britta parks the VW bus in front of the old farmhouse, dozing as contentedly as a cat in the warm morning sunshine. The girls tumble out and disappear into the garden before Britta and Janina can issue the usual admonitions. The little party got an early start, and the morning is splendid. Sunlight shines in blinding beams through the foliage of the trees; the air smells fresh, as though the world has just been made. Janina finds the key under a flowerpot next to the front steps. There’s no real estate agent this time; it’s one last, private viewing before the buyers make a definitive offer. To “check the vibes,” as Janina says, one more time.
The door swings open, Britta jumps, there’s a hiss, and something flashes past them, marten, polecat, weasel, Britta thinks, and sees a gray mass disappear into the bushes. But then the apparition is followed, in a leisurely manner, by a fat, black-and-white-spotted cat. On its way past Britta, it looks her directly in the eyes, as if to say, No matter what you think you’re doing, we were here first.
Once she’s inside, it seems to Britta that the dust layer is even thicker and the dead fly count even higher than they were last time. With no men and no agent, the house is quiet inside. The twittering of birds ripples through all the rooms; a window must be open somewhere. In spite of the dirt, a certain dignity emanates from the house. Britta concludes that it’s four times as old as she is. It has seen two world wars, births, deaths, every aspect of human fate. In the living room with its blond wood floors, an old rocking horse looks at them through amber eyes. Oddly, she didn’t notice it last time.
They don’t speak. They go through all the rooms once again and climb up the steep stairs. There’s another bathroom on the upper floor, along with several bedrooms, one of which contains an old bed. They sit on it and look out through the window at the crowns of the old trees, in which extended families of sparrows are squabbling. Knut and Janina may have no talent for success, but it’s possible they’re just lucky. Britta can foresee how they’ll live here, with little work and little money, with chickens, a vegetable garden, and another child crawling around on the wood floors. Model students of the unconditional basic income. Always kept busy by everyday concerns, but suffused with love for the place where they find themselves. All at once, Britta feels old-fashioned. Maybe the dream of country living is an anachronism, but so are long working days and the constant preoccupation with business. Britta has always looked down on mellow Janina and feckless Knut, with their old-fashioned, permanently aggrieved take on politics and society. But maybe Britta, with her nihilistic pride, is also a dinosaur, convinced of its superiority even as it’s dying out.
As Janina lets herself sink backward onto the bed, Britta does the same. A grandmotherly smell rises from the mattress. They lie next to each other and look up at the ceiling, where an old light fixture is still attached, a sort of upside-down Mason jar with little cats painted on its milky glass. Was this once a child’s bedroom? Did a little boy lie in the heavy wooden bed, and when he couldn’t sleep at night, did he look at the cats on the ceiling light, some of them licking their paws, others curled up and purring?
Britta’s whole body starts to tingle, and then, for the first time in days, relaxation overwhelms her. She feels as though she’s on the verge of sleep. Maybe she should take some time off, after all. It surely doesn’t have to be a full year, or half a year, but maybe three months or even a couple of weeks, an extended vacation during which she could help Janina fix up this house, and together they could pick cherries and bake cakes and prepare dinners for their families to eat under the trees on mild evenings. Britta hasn’t taken a vacation in years; she doesn’t know what life without The Bridge would feel like.
We can see Marquardt and Jawad through to the end and pull off the big thing with Julietta, she thinks, and then I’ll go on sabbatical for a while. What a sign of supreme confidence! Babak will hold down the fort, and the little boys from “Empty Hearts” will have learned that it’s unwise to pee on a dinosaur’s leg.
When her diaphragm begins to flutter, Britta knows things won’t happen that way. The thought of baking cakes unnerves her, and her relaxation slides into anxiety.
“Imagine you have a small box with a red button on it,” she says. “If you press the button, all the grade-A nutcases in the world—Freyer, Trump, and all the others—will instantaneously die. What do you do?”
Janina turns her head and looks at Britta from the side. “The Molotov cocktails won’t leave you in peace, huh?”
“Solve the dilemma. What do you do with the little box?”
“I pitch it out the window, high and far.”
“What?” Britta sits up. “You agreed with the Molotov flinging.”
“Ah, but that wasn’t serious.” Now Janina’s lying on her side, propped up on an elbow. “We’re in complete agreement, Britta. Violence is wrong. No matter what its purpose may be.”
This answer rattles around in Britta’s head; for a moment, she can no longer see, the result of having shut her eyes. Stomach acid surges up into her throat. Janina’s voice comes from far away.
“Do you think we should keep this bed?”
But Britta has already leaped from the bed and run into the bathroom to throw up.