They’re standing beside the shop window wondering if there’s something wrong with the colors, or whether it’s their eyes. Everything looked different in the shop. Oswald’s shirt is too pink, Bruno’s T-shirt is too blue. They look like iced lollipops on legs.

“I look like a fucking Smurf,” says Bruno.

“Shit,” says Oswald.

The day started so well. They were about to sit down in Starbucks when Bruno had to stop by the shop window.

“Nothing looks really good in artificial light,” he says.

“Shit,” Oswald says again.

While Bruno is changing his clothes in the bathroom, Oswald orders coffee, mineral water, and brownies. And while Oswald is getting changed, Bruno finds a seat outside and stirs milk into his coffee and tries not to light a cigarette. Since he gave up smoking, he’s felt terribly healthy. He hates fresh air, and the company could be better. Even though everyone claims they’d died out in the mid-nineties, most of the people sitting around him are yuppies—severe–looking women in shiny polyester blouses that are supposed to make them look ten years younger; guys with tousled hair and the look of eternal students, who earn five-figure sums a month and behave as if they’d just got out of bed. Everything changes. Yuppies have a new disguise. They try to look ordinary. They’ve given up putting their wealth on display, because even yuppies get lonely, so they try and look young, lost, and casual. Bruno wonders who they’re actually trying to fool. They can’t change anything about their behavior—they yell into their phones or sit over their MacBooks and adjust the display every thirty seconds because the sun’s so bright. Bruno feels vindicated. When the light is wrong nothing works. Oswald comes outside wearing his old clothes now, and says he feels like himself again.

“Ditto,” says Bruno.

They drink their coffee, eat the brownies, and stretch their legs. They can’t know that in four minutes they’ll get a call from Tanner. They can’t even guess how quickly any form of light can make way for darkness.

Bruno’s driving today, Oswald’s responsible for everything else—air conditioning, music, snacks, drinks. When Bruno’s the passenger they mostly listen to Steppenwolf and it’s always too hot in the car. Oswald favors a cool breeze, the sound of Ghinzu, and an ice-cold beer in his hand. “Mine” is on at the moment, and even Bruno can’t help smiling. They’re similar in many ways. They have no conscience, they see brutality as a refined kind of sport, and never doubt one another. And they’re learning English together.

“Man, I love that sound.”

“It is strange, but strange is good.”

“It makes my nerves tingle.”

“That’s very nicely said.”

“Thank you.”

For four years Oswald tried to join the fire brigade, but he failed every psychological test. For a while he earned his money as a bodyguard, until one day the Lasser family discovered him. One small job was followed by the next small job, and soon the jobs changed and became too big for Oswald to do on his own. That’s when Bruno arrived on the scene.

Bruno served for three years with the French Foreign Legion, and worked his way up to officer. He liked the job, but couldn’t cope with the new recruits. Most of them came from Russia and Romania, and he didn’t like their mentality. So Bruno went back to Germany, where he met Oswald at a Lasser family party. After that they joined forces and since then they’ve been doing their jobs together. They are street mercenaries and their big dream is to be hired as real mercenaries by Aegis Defence Services. To pass the admission test, they’re polishing up their English and taking language courses. They always sound like tourists as soon as they start talking English to each other.

“There’s this new restaurant where you pick everything you want to be fried and then you put it in a little bowl and the chef fries it and a waiter brings it to your table so you can eat it with rice.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m hungry, that’s what I’m talking about.”

“You had a brownie.”

“I know.”

“Guess what.”

“What?”

“I’m hungry too.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“How about a nice steak with fries and herb butter?”

“Man, shut up, my juices are flowing.”

“Yeah, mine too.”

Bruno parks the car behind a Range Rover; they get out and put on their sunglasses. Lots of people think they’re brothers, the same physique, the same gestures. But that’s how it goes when you’ve been working together for a long time. The differences blur, you’re each reflected in the other, and habits overlay one another like transparent foil. Bruno calls it “character assimilation.” Oswald doesn’t yet know what to make of the definition.

The café has twelve tables outside. The tables are standing around a spreading chestnut tree, all of them are occupied. A sunny day in Hamburg means that the streets are crowded, and anyone who isn’t in the street is strolling along the Alster, or sitting in cafés.

“There they are.”

Oswald points at one of the tables. The girls are impossible to miss. Bruno licks his lips. Girls are his thing. Oswald prefers older women who have nothing more to lose.

“I’m going for a snack,” Bruno says and moves closer like a dark wave. He stops by the table and takes off his sunglasses. The girls look up at the same time and see a bald man in his mid-thirties, leather jacket, goatee beard, twice-broken nose, weary eyes.

“Girls, Ragnar Desche sends us.”

Oswald has materialized on the other side of the table at the same time. He watches as the girl with the red hair grabs a fork. Move once more and I’ll break your damn wrist, Oswald thinks. He knows where to strike. He knows the sound the bone would make as it broke. As if the redhead could read his mind, she looks up and sees a bald man in his mid-thirties in a skin-tight red T-shirt and beige pants, clean-shaven, tattoo on his neck, birthmark in the corner of his mouth. The man isn’t smiling. The redhead looks away.

Lucky you, thinks Oswald and hears Bruno saying: “Girls, Ragnar Desche sends us.”

“So?”

Bruno thinks he has misheard. The girl reminds him of that actress in Kill Bill. He can’t think of her name. Lucy something. Her hair is like black ink. He likes the way she says So? He imagines her saying Fuck me! and Yes, make me come! He points over his shoulder with his thumb.

“Our car’s out back, we’ve got to talk.”

“Our car’s out back as well,” says Lucy, “but we’re not talking to you.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s so.”

“Oswald?”

“Yes, Bruno.”

“Take the blonde.”

And then Oswald takes the blonde.

The blonde is the best choice. Beaten and with a black eye, she’s the ideal victim. Oswald grabs her hair with his right hand and makes a fist. A second later the blonde is standing on tiptoes and he has his arm around her neck. It’s going as smoothly as closing a zipper.

“Hey, what are you doing?” asks a woman from the next table.

“Police,” says Bruno and smiles and shows her the gap between his front teeth and the gap in his leather jacket from which the butt of his pistol protrudes. The woman quickly looks elsewhere.

“You’re definitely not cops,” says the redhead.

Bruno shrugs.

“And you’re not nice little girls driving around in Daddy’s car, are you?”

“Let me go, you jerk!” hisses the blonde, and tries to break free. Oswald tenses his arm against her throat; she pants, gives up, and raises her hands in defeat, Oswald loosens his grip, Bruno clears his throat and says, “I’m only going to repeat it once. Our car is out back, we need to talk.”

This time they obey, this time they stand up. They actually are good girls, thinks Bruno and winks at Oswald. Oswald winks back, then his mouth makes an O and he pushes the blonde away as if she were on fire.

“What the—?”

Oswald regrets taking his eyes off the redhead for even a second. He looks down at himself. The fork is sticking out of his inner thigh. It’s really stupid. A fork is a fork. Oswald has had worse things in his arm and his back. Knives, screwdrivers, bolt cutters, and once even the broken end of a broomstick. A fork is just a fork. But Oswald hates surprises. He knows what’s going to happen next. After he’s pulled out the fork, he’ll grab hold of the redhead and only let go when she whines for mercy.

“You rotten little bitch!”

Oswald pulls the fork out of his thigh and is about to grab the redhead when something warm trickles down his leg. I’ve pissed myself, he thinks with alarm. His right trouser leg is dark from the thigh to the shoes.

That’s not piss, that’s …

The blood from his wound is spraying bright red across the table. Oswald drops the fork and presses his hand to his leg. His thoughts are reduced to a single sentence that wanders through his head in a panicky loop and doesn’t seem to want to end: The kid’s hit my artery The kid’s hit my artery The kid’s hit my artery The kid’s hit The kid’s hit The kid’s gone and fucking hit my artery.

It takes Bruno a moment to understand what’s actually happening. He sees Oswald’s surprised face and then the blood spraying across the table as Oswald pulls out the fork. The girls recoil, a chair tips over, someone screams. Oswald tumbles backward, one hand on his thigh, his face a grimace, and it’s only then that Bruno is ready to react. Only then.

That means a delay of about five seconds.

Five seconds that Bruno’s lost.

Lucy’s so close that he can smell her breath. He doesn’t know how she can be so quick. With his left elbow he feels that his gun has gone from his shoulder holster. How the hell did she do that? The barrel presses against his belly, he automatically tenses his muscles as if stomach muscles could stop a bullet. Even though Bruno knows for sure that the safety catch was on, there’s no guarantee that the safety catch is on right now.

“If you’re the cops,” says Lucy, “I’m Bruce Lee.”

Two of the girls run around the table and past Bruno, only Lucy stays so close to him that he can feel her pointed breasts against his balls. She’s so small, he thinks, how can she be so quick if she’s so small? He doesn’t move. Nothing like this has ever happened to him.

“Shut your eyes,” says Lucy.

Bruno shuts his eyes, he smells her warm chewing gum breath and can’t help getting aroused. He would like to tell the girl she really turns him on, that she turns him on so much that he has no words for it, when the gun barrel disappears from his belly. Bruno opens his eyes and sees Lucy running after her girlfriends. He ignores Oswald, he ignores the people gaping at him. All he sees is Lucy’s waving hair. He gets his brass knuckles out of his jacket pocket, slips it onto the fingers of his right hand, and sets off in pursuit.

The loss of blood makes Oswald frighteningly light-headed. It’s not the first time he’s lost blood. Once Bruno couldn’t find him for a whole hour after a gang of Albanians picked a fight with them. Oswald was lying in a bush and pressing both hands to a cut in his neck. First you get light-headed, the cold starts with your hands and feet and works its way to your heart, death opens up all around you like a curtain, and the darkness flows in and bathes everything in suffocating silence. Oswald knows it would be a clever idea to let the redhead go; he has to pull his belt out of his trousers and tie his leg. But he also knows he has a job to do here, so he goes on the attack, catches the redhead by the arm and pulls her around. She falls. Oswald can’t suppress a smile, he’s so fixated on the redhead that he forgot the blonde for a second. She comes down on him like a hellcat, her nails cut into his face, they rip into the corners of his mouth and claw into his eyes, then the blonde lets go of him for a moment and he thinks it’s his move. It’s my move now! He’ll never understand how he could have made such a mistake. The blonde rams both fists into his stomach, the air is squeezed out of him and he goes over on his ankle, his knees striking the ground hard.

“Run,” he hears the blonde shouting.

“But—”

“Stink, run!”

Oswald knows it’s the loss of blood, otherwise he couldn’t understand the situation. This is how it must be. He’s not a pussy, he’s a man and the blonde is a girl and she’s standing there like a fucking warrior. Judo or karate, he thinks, these damn kids nowadays learn everything far too early. Oswald shuts his eyes, lowers his head, and stays in that position. He knows how pitiful it looks. Oswald is weak and on his knees. He’s also a bastard who’s pressing the right buttons. The blonde falls for the oldest trick in the book. She knows how to fight, but no one’s taught her the rules.

If you injure someone, make sure he can’t get up.

The blonde turns away.

Oswald hears the rustle of her skirt and gets up.

Bruno feels old. The three girls in front of him are fast, Lucy in particular seems to have a built-in gear shift, she goes off like a crazy firework and overtakes her girlfriends. Bruno hunches his shoulders, he’s nothing now but muscles and lungs. Anything can definitely happen today, but the day has yet to come when a girl leaves him behind.

After three hundred yards he overtakes the tall one who was sitting next to Lucy. She screeches when he draws level with her. Bruno’s left arm shoots out, he rams the girl on the chest, she stumbles over a park bench and falls in the grass. Bruno runs on.

In front of him now is the girl who was sitting to the right of the redhead. Bruno knows she’s Oskar Desche’s daughter. One of those beauties who take your breath away even as a teenager, long legs and a dreamy face and that fucked-up hairdo that he wants to grab and pull her head to him. Bruno can’t remember her name, he’s never been good with names, Oswald deals with all that. Tanner sent a picture of the girls to his phone. Even though he insisted that they weren’t to touch Desche’s daughter, the rules don’t apply right now. Tanner must never find out. Bruno kicks the girl’s legs out from under her. She crashes to the ground, it’s a perfect foul. Bruno will take care of her later. He runs on and feels better.

Lucy, I’m coming.

Her hair is a flag, her backside an apple. Bruno imagines putting both hands around that ass and automatically speeds up. Lucy is running toward the crossroads. She only understands her mistake when she’s reached the traffic island. The cars start moving, she can’t go on, she can’t go back. Bruno waits for a gap in the traffic and sprints over. She stands with her back to him. The island is three meters across. They’re alone.

“Surprise,” says Bruno.

She turns around. Her eyes flash. In her hand she’s holding Bruno’s Five-Seven Tactical. Bruno fears and respects this weapon. Not only can it be switched to automatic, not only does it have a magazine with twenty cartridges, it also pulverizes most bulletproof jackets as if they were made of papier-mâché, and has such a small kick that it’s like being stroked. There are few things in the world that Bruno is seriously afraid of. One of these is his beloved Five-Seven, whose muzzle is right now pointing at his chest. Bruno says, “Take the gun down.”

Now Lucy’s whole arm is trembling, and she has to use her other hand to support the weapon. Bruno sees a tear running down her cheek and wishes he could wipe it away. He knows she won’t shoot. He knows who’s capable of that kind of thing and who isn’t. She would never stand like that if she was. He’s not an idiot. He knows the cowards, the hesitant ones and the killers. She’s not a killer. She’s a sweet little bitch that he’s cornered. She is his now. That’s exactly what he says to her.

“You’re mine now.”

She brings the gun down. The lights change. The cars stop. Bruno senses the drivers’ eyes. Lucy has her head lowered.

“Look at me.”

She raises her head and looks at him.

“And now come to me.”

Just as Bruno recognizes a killer, he also recognizes someone who’s broken. She comes closer, five steps, she’s standing in front of him. Close. So close that they’re touching. Bruno feels how aroused he is.

“Lean against me, it’s over.”

She leans against him. She’s so small that he feels her breath under his heart. The lights change. The cars set off. One driver can’t take his eyes off them. The other cars beep their horns. The car sets off with a jolt. Bruno strokes her beautiful black hair. His brass knuckles flash in the sunlight. Her head smells like hot sand. He knows he has to hurt her, but he also knows he’ll keep the pain within limits.

“Good girl.”

Her right hand rests on his chest, she looks up and there’s a smile and the smile doesn’t make sense, because she’s looking past him. Bruno turns his head to see what she sees and feels the pressure of her fingers. The push comes as such a surprise that Bruno doesn’t understand how it’s possible. How could I have been so deceived? It was all in her eyes, she was broken, she was lost, and it was all a lie. His left foot gets jammed at the curbstone, his right foot kicks back, his fingers slip out of her hair and for a fragment of a second they look each other in the eye, then a van from a flower shop hits him and Bruno is torn off the island and thrown into the oncoming traffic.

Oswald is better off than Bruno, because he doesn’t have to run far. The blonde doesn’t even know he’s behind her. She isn’t especially fast in her long skirt, and she’s probably thinking he’s still kneeling on the pavement, bleeding like a stuck pig.

Girl, you haven’t the faintest idea who I am, Oswald thinks and closes his fist around her hair again. For a moment the blonde loses the ground under her feet, her head is pulled back, her mouth is an O, her legs fly forward. Oswald catches her, before she hits the ground. He holds her close, feels the heat of her body, and only now does he sense that something has changed.

I’m shivering. I’ve got to get a move on before—

The blonde screams, the blonde wriggles, Oswald loses his balance and falls without letting her go. The impact shakes him, his teeth click painfully against each other and bite off the tip of his tongue. The girl reaches back, claws him, pulls on his ears. Oswald is losing control. Pain and fury, fury and pain. His arms are tight around her. He presses hard and hears bones breaking, presses hard and hears her legs dragging along the ground, shifts his weight and rolls onto the girl, while someone is thrashing away at his back, while someone is pulling on his arms, he covers the girl heavily and securely and his tired body starts sucking the warmth from her until they’re both lying motionless in a puddle of blood and there’s nothing to tell them apart.

No light, no strength, and no warmth.

Oswald isn’t aware of them lifting him off the blonde. He isn’t aware of the redhead spitting at him and kicking and cursing, or one of the guests from the café dragging the redhead away. He’s part of the present that goes on existing without him.

Oswald will never know that the blond girl was called Ruth, that she was incredibly hungry for life and would have given anything to put her mark on the world. And he’ll never know that that same day two police officers rang the girl’s parents’ doorbell, that her mother broke down and clung to the father. He won’t be there when her parents arrive in Hamburg to identify their dead daughter in the morgue. And he’ll never know how it feels to die pointlessly at sixteen, and lose your friends and still be a hero because that one girl managed to stop a guy like Oswald. Forever. For eternity.