You (43 page)

You’re standing by the Heiligengeistfeld, and the sky is the same crystal blue as the innocent eyes of a newborn baby. You put on your sunglasses. Your car is parked thirty yards from the Millerntor in a no-parking zone. You wait for Tanner to get out and confirm the coordinates again.

The Hummelfest fair is being set up, the stalls and most of the attractions are already standing there, ready for the surge of visitors which is supposedly going to break last year’s record. It isn’t due to open for another three days, and right now you couldn’t be less interested.

“Something smells bad about this,” says Leo.

Two and a half hours have passed since you left Berlin. You’re so close to the girls that they should be able to feel your breath, but Leo’s right, something smells bad. Tanner comes over to you and says, “It isn’t a mistake, Fabrizio’s checked the coordinates three times.”

You set yourselves in motion in sync. You’re a smooth machine advancing on eight legs, avoiding a crane, walking past the whitewater ride and stopping by the big wheel. You look up. The topmost gondolas are shifting gently in the wind.

“They can’t be up there,” says your son.

A technician tells you no one’s allowed up the big wheel yet. Tanner puts a few bank notes in his hand. The gondolas start to move and rotate slowly past you. Leo checks each individual one.
In the twenty-sixth gondola you find a plastic bag on the seat. The technician gets nervous.

“Is that a bomb or what?”

No one replies. Tanner opens the bag, you all look in, look at each other, look back in the bag. Four cell phones look back at you and one of them lights up. The first notes of a song ring out. You take the phone and press receive.

“We need to talk,” says a voice.

You push your sunglasses up on your forehead and look around, you listen to the breathing in your ear and scour the area with your eyes.

Where is he?

You know he needs visual contact. He doesn’t wait for your reaction. He tells you where to meet, then the line goes dead. You drop the phone back in the plastic bag. Your mood hits bottom.

It’s Friday afternoon, and even in Hamburg no one works at this time of day. The whole of Germany is taking a long weekend and laughing in the face of the global economic crisis. The promenade is crowded. Strollers, joggers, mothers with baby buggies, and a few lunatics with dogs smiling indulgently at other lunatics with dogs. He’s chosen a good spot. He’s leaning against the railing with his back turned to you as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He doesn’t deceive you. You stand on his left, Tanner on his right, Leo sits in the car, your son waits a few feet away and keeps an eye on everything.

“We’re here.”

He looks first at you, then at Tanner, then his eye returns to you. Now he knows who’s in charge. You would guess he’s in his mid-twenties. His hair is long and well looked after. You can see the film of sweat on his forehead. He smells of expensive aftershave. Whoever he is, you’ve never seen him before.

“Keep your elbows on the railing,” you tell him, “and spread your legs.”

His left eyelid twitches.

“Why should I do that?”

“Because I’m not talking to anyone who’s carrying a gun in his waistband and thinks I’m not going to notice.”

He could run now, he could try to draw the gun. Instead his elbows stay on the railing, and he spreads his legs slightly. Your son steps forward and frisks him, pulls the pistol out of his waistband, shows it to you, you nod, your son puts it in his jacket before stepping back to where he was.

“Good,” you say and lean against the railing again, “we’ve got that out of the way. Who are you?”

“Neil.”

“Neil who?”

“Neil Exner.”

“Oh, shit,” says Tanner from the other side.

You don’t move, and search Neil Exner’s face for similarities.

The Emperor’s grandson? How absurd is that?

You were at the boy’s christening, you’d never have recognized him. And how could you? The last time your paths crossed he was nine years old and sitting on a bicycle while you chatted with his grandfather.

Just how small is this world?

You’re sure this isn’t coincidence. There are lots of Exners in Germany, but running into an Exner on the shores of the Alster after your brother’s been murdered and you’ve had five kilos of heroin stolen has nothing to do with coincidence, there’s planning behind it. Suddenly everything makes sense. The girls are just a tool. Put two and two together. Then there’s your brother’s nervousness over the past few months, as if something was in pursuit of him, as if there was a burden weighing him down. It all fits together. But what is it about? And why would Exner’s family want to fuck you over?

Yes, why?

How unprofessional is that? Is there something you’ve misunderstood?

You know that Ritchie Exner is dying of cancer, his crazy brother Ruprecht is lost in contemplation, and the Emperor is in his grave and hasn’t planned anything new for eleven years.

And here we have the little Exner
.

Ask him.

“What does your family have to do with this whole business?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m going to ask you again, what does your family have to do with this whole business?”

“My family has nothing to do with it, okay?”

Perhaps it’s the
okay
, or the way he replies—your fingers itch to smash his head against the railing.

“Does your father know about this?”

“I talked to him this morning, but as I said, the family has nothing to do with it.”

“So is it pure chance?”

“Looks that way.”

You observe a boat bobbing past, you study a seagull turning languidly in the sunlight like a tossed coin, in defiance of gravity. You’re very glad you live in Berlin.

“You know what I think of chance?”

You spit. You spit on Hamburg and on this whole day.

“That’s what I think about it. So start from the beginning and convince me your family has nothing to do with it.”

He tells you he was in Berlin three days ago. And when he was there he met a girl. Stink. They spent the evening together and this morning she sought him out here in Hamburg because she and her girls needed money.

“And you gave them money?”

“They don’t know who I am or who my family is,” he says, avoiding your question. “And they don’t know I’m talking to you.”

“And you gave them money?”

“A bit.”

“Did they tell you what they’d done?”

He nods.

“And do you know what will happen to those girls if I find them?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

He clears his throat and takes a deep breath.

“I want to suggest a deal. I know where the drugs are. The whole package.”

You wait for him to say something more. He doesn’t. He’s waiting for your question.

“What do you want in return?”

“The girls.”

You’re confused.

“We haven’t got the girls.”

“I know. I want you to let them go. You will get your merchandise back, and that will be that.”

Tanner laughs, his laughter startles Neil Exner, who flinches for a second. He looks at Tanner, who shakes his head as if Exner has made a big mistake. He walks over to your son. Neil Exner now belongs to you alone.

“My brother’s dead,” you say.

“I’m sorry, but I think—”

“You don’t need to think. I said, my brother’s dead. After that sentence there’s a full stop. After the full stop you have nothing more to say. I don’t expect any sympathy from you. You owe it to your grandfather that you’re still alive. Do you think these strollers all around us would stop me from pulling your heart out? What’s wrong with you? You meet me and you’re carrying a gun? Are you completely nuts? Where did you get that gun from, anyway?”

“From the girls.”

“How did five girls from Berlin get hold of a gun that’s used by a French anti-terrorism unit?”

It’s obvious he has no idea.

“If I find out that your family has anything to do with this problem, I advise your clan to hide itself very well or—as your Uncle Ruprecht has already done—disappear without trace. I’m asking you one last time: do you really think that chance brought us here to the Alster?”

“Perhaps it was fate.”

You laugh at him.

“Kid, fate is a guy with syphilis and a hard-on, who fucks you in the ass every time you look in the wrong direction. Do you think I’d ever turn my back on fate?”

“Not really.”

“Then forget fate. We’re here because we feel too much. Me for my brother, you for some girls you don’t know …”

Suddenly you slam on the brakes and understand what you’re doing here. You don’t want to tell this boy anything about your anger and feeling of helplessness. Stick to the facts.

“Were the cell phones your idea?”

He nods and says that GPS isn’t an obscure bit of terminology these days, and that he thinks you must have tracked the girls down to the café somehow or other.

“And the big wheel? Did you stage all that just to gain some time?”

“I want to protect them, I want—”

“Who do you want to protect them from?”

You laugh at him.

“From me?”

You tap yourself on the chest as if the idea of protecting someone from you were completely ridiculous. He nods, he means you, you shout over your shoulder, “Hey, you hear that, he wants to protect the girls from me.”

Tanner and his son don’t laugh, Neil Exner smiles wearily, he knows you’re fucking with him, and because he knows this you return his smile for a moment, almost apologetically, before burying your fist so deep in his stomach that you can feel his guts rearranging themselves under the impact. Exner gasps for air, steps sideways, and collapses over the railing. A thread of saliva falls from his mouth and lands in the water. You hold the boy, you straighten him back up, standing close beside him. It all went so fast that none of the passersby noticed. Two friends having an intimate conversation.

“Where’s the merchandise?”

“I …”

Exner coughs.

“… need a promise …”

“There are no promises, you have to trust in faith.”

You force his torso further over the railing so that he can see his reflection.

“Where’s the damned merchandise?”

He raises a pleading hand, he’s had enough. A duck swims up, turns in a circle, and swims away again. Neil Exner takes a key out of his trousers and hands it to you.

“It’s in a safe-deposit box at Kaiserdamm underground station. That’s—”

“I know where that is.”

You put the key in your pocket and let go of Neil Exner. He
wipes the saliva from his chin, straightens up, takes a deep breath, one hand on his stomach, one on the railing. He’s as white as a sheet.

“Ragnar?”

You turn round. Tanner is holding his phone up to you.

“It’s David, he knows where the girls are.”

You smile and look at Exner.

“Surprised? Did you really think we’d lose them just because you took their phones? GPS isn’t some obscure terminology anymore, right?”

You hold out your hand, your son steps forward and passes you the plastic bag with the cell phones, you press them against Exner’s chest.

“All you had to do was take the batteries out.”

“If I’d just taken the batteries out we wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Clever boy.”

“I’m not a boy.”

“If you’re not a boy, then stop behaving like a boy and forget about the girls. You’re finished here. Have you got that into your head? Good. And say hello from me next time you visit your father.” You’re about to turn away, Exner’s hand grips your elbow, your son wants to intervene, you tell him no with a shake of your head. Exner says, “Please. You’ve got what you wanted, and one of the girls is dead, surely that must be enough.”

At that moment you recognize the Emperor in his eyes. The Emperor on the days when he was weak. You’ve had enough.

“Do you really think the merchandise is my biggest problem? I mean, do I look like someone who’d drive to Hamburg for a few crappy kilos of heroin? Do I look like a drug runner to you? Do you think I’m an idiot?”

“No, but—”

“I’m only letting you go because your grandfather was my friend a long time ago, so don’t push it.”

“But they haven’t done anything!” he blurts out.

“Can you actually hear yourself? Do you hear that whining noise? Have these bitches told you they haven’t done anything? Have they told you my brother had a heart attack or a stroke? Tell
me, how old are you, taking some sixteen-year-old girls seriously just because they’re sweet and vulnerable?”

Neil Exner looks past you. You’ve found a sore point. This guy doesn’t think with his head, he thinks with his feelings.

“Look at me.”

He looks at you.

“Would you put your hand in the fire for these girls?”

“I …”

He hesitates, he wants to keep his hand.

“I don’t know,” he says, finishing his sentence.

“If you’re not sure who you’re putting your life on the line for, then keep out of it. Didn’t you learn anything from your grandfather? The only people who beg are the ones with nothing to offer. And now take a look at yourself. You’re begging. It’s over. Go home.”