“Damn,” Christoph muttered, quickly pulling the covers over them.
“Grandpa,” said Pia, giggling as she rested her forehead on his back.
“Not right now, Lilly,” Christoph told his granddaughter. “Go back to bed. In a few minutes, I’ll come and tuck you in.”
“You don’t have any clothes on,” Lilly stated calmly. “Are you going to make a baby?”
Christoph was speechless.
“Mama and Daddy try it almost every night, and sometimes in the daytime, too,” said Lilly wisely as she sat down on the edge of the bed. “But so far, I don’t have any sisters or brothers. Grandpa, if Pia has a baby, will he be my grandson?”
Pia pressed her hand to her lips, fighting back a fit of laughter.
“No.” Christoph sighed. “But to be honest, right now I can’t concentrate on possible family ties.”
“Don’t worry, Grandpa. You’re pretty old anyway.” Lilly cocked her head to one side. “But I can play with the baby, can’t I?”
“Right now, you have to go back to bed,” said Christoph. Lilly yawned and nodded, but then she recalled her nightmare.
“But I’m afraid to go downstairs by myself,” she told him. “Can you come with me? Please, Grandpa. I promise to fall asleep right away.”
“You managed to come upstairs by yourself,” said Christoph, but he was already defeated.
“Go on,” Pia chortled. “I’ll have a glass of wine in the meantime.”
“Traitor,” Christoph complained. “You’re torpedoing all my attempts at child rearing. Lilly, wait outside the door. I’ll be right there.”
“Okay.” The little girl slid down off the edge of the bed. “Good night, Pia.”
“Good night, Lilly,” said Pia. When the girl was gone, she exploded with laughter. She laughed until the tears ran down her face.
Christoph stood up and slipped on undershorts and a T-shirt.
“That kid!” He shook his head in feigned desperation. “I think I’m going to have to speak to Anna about raising kids.”
Pia turned over on her back and grinned.
“Lover man, oh, where can you be?” Pia sang, laughing.
“Don’t think you’re getting off so easy,” said Christoph with a grin. “I’ll be right back. And don’t you dare fall asleep!”
Friday, July 2, 2010
They had blindfolded him and his hands were cuffed behind his back. No one said a word during the drive, which lasted about half an hour. The car wasn’t a minivan like the one they had transported him in from the Amsterdam main station to the building with the cellar room. This was a sedan, a limousine. Not a BMW or Mercedes—the suspension was too soft for that; instead, something British. Maybe a Jaguar or Bentley. Kilian Rothemund inhaled the faint aroma of leather and wood; he heard the silky soft purr of the twelve-cylinder engine and felt the gentle tilt of the chassis on every curve. The removal of visual input sharpened all his other senses, and Kilian concentrated on what he could hear, smell, and feel. Besides him, there were at least three other men in the car—two in front and another next to him on the backseat. He could smell an expensive aftershave, but also the body odor of a man who hadn’t washed in a while. That was the one sitting next to him. He wore a cheap fake-leather jacket and had smoked recently. Of course, none of this helped him with the question of where they were taking him and what they wanted from him, but concentrating on external conditions helped Kilian suppress his anxiety.
After they’d been driving for a while at high speed on a highway with no noticeable bumps, the driver slowed down and made a sharp right turn. Autobahn exit, Kilian assumed. The blinker was ticking. The man in the passenger seat coughed.
“On the left up ahead,” he said in a low voice. German, with no accent. A little later, the car rolled over cobblestone pavement and came to a halt. The doors opened, and Kilian felt his arm gripped hard as he was yanked out of the car. Gravel crunched loudly under his shoes, and the air was mild. The scent of damp soil mixed with country smells. Frogs croaked in the distance.
It was a weird feeling to walk without being able to see.
“Watch the step,” somebody said beside him, but he stumbled anyway and banged his shoulder against a rough brick wall.
“Where are you taking me?” Kilian asked. He didn’t expect an answer, and he got none. More stairs, going down now. It smelled sweet, like apples and cider. A cellar, judging by the intensity of the smell, maybe even with a cider press. Another set of stairs, this time going up.
A door opened in front of him, the hinges squeaking lightly. No more cellar smell. A parquet floor. And books. The smell of old books—leather, paper, dust. A library?
“Ah, you’re all here,” someone said quietly. Chair legs scraped on the floor.
“Sit down.”
This order was for him. Kilian sat down on a chair, and his arms were yanked behind him, his ankles fastened to the chair legs. Someone tore the blindfold off his eyes. Harsh light bombarded his retinas; his eyes teared up, and he blinked.
“What were you doing in Amsterdam?” asked a man whose voice he hadn’t heard before. This question set off all the alarm bells in Kilian’s brain and confirmed his worst fears. He was in the hands of the people who had ruined his life nine years ago. They had shown no mercy the last time, and they weren’t about to do so today, either. It was pointless to ask where they’d gotten the information that he had gone to Holland. It made no difference to the outcome.
“Visiting friends,” he replied.
“We know these so-called friends you visited,” said the man. “Now cut the crap. What did you talk to them about?”
Kilian perceived the men behind the light only as silhouettes; he could see no faces, not even outlines.
“About sailing,” said Kilian.
The punch came with no warning and hit him in the middle of his face. His nose cracked and he tasted blood.
“I don’t like asking questions twice,” said the man. “So, what did you talk about?”
Kilian said nothing. He was waiting with muscles tensed for the next blow, the next pain. Instead, somebody turned the chair he was sitting on to the left. There was a TV hanging on the wall.
He jumped when he suddenly saw Hanna’s face. They had gagged her. Blood was running over her forehead and her eyes were wide in panicky terror. The camera pulled back a little. Hanna was naked and bound, kneeling on bare concrete. These motherfuckers had filmed her being beaten and raped. It tore Kilian’s heart open. He turned his head away and closed his eyes; he couldn’t watch the woman he loved suffering the torments of hell and fear of death.
“Look at it!” Somebody grabbed his hair, jerked his head up, but he squeezed his eyes shut. They couldn’t force him to watch, but he had to listen to the desperate sounds Hanna was making, hear the sneering voice of her torturer, who was giving a running commentary of his disgusting actions. His stomach convulsed and he retched up a flood of bitter gall.
“You fucks!” he yelled. “You filthy, rotten pigs! What have you done?”
He was pummeled by fists and couldn’t defend himself. It sounded like a gunshot inside his head when his cheekbone snapped; his skin burst open and blood ran down his chin, mixed with the tears he couldn’t hold back.
“Do you want the same thing to happen to your daughter?” hissed a voice close to his ear. “Yeah, you want that? Here, look, there she is, your innocent little daughter. That’s her, right?”
Kilian opened his eyes. The video was poor quality, probably taken with a hidden camera, but it was clearly Chiara standing in front of the goal at the hockey club, talking to a young man who had turned his back to the camera. She gave a coquettish laugh, her long blond hair falling over her bare shoulders as she looked up at the man. He gasped for breath. His throat was now choked, his nose stopped up with blood and tears. Fear crept like ice through every vein in his body.
“A really sweet kid, little Chiara. Nice small titties and a tight ass,” said the voice behind him. “A video starring her would probably be a big hit.”
Laughter.
“If you don’t open your mouth soon, your little girl is going to experience the same thing this afternoon as that TV bitch.”
Kilian broke down. He had held out through every pain, every torment, and every torture, but the thought of these people doing the same thing to his daughter that they’d done to Hanna was absolutely intolerable. He opened his mouth and started talking.
* * *
“Come, Lomax!”
She opened the front door. The dog jumped out of his basket like greased lightning and dashed past her out the door. She crossed the courtyard and went into the garden. Droplets of dew glittered on the grass in the light of the rising sun. The brindled Staffordshire bull terrier was frolicking all over the lawn, peeing on every other rosebush, growling each time as he kicked up dirt with his hind legs. He was the king of the yard, the boss. The other dogs respected him without protest.
Just like other men respect Bernd, Michaela thought. Since the day before yesterday, she hadn’t heard a word from her husband. In the past, that had happened often, but for many years he hadn’t had anything to do with the cops. Even when she wasn’t alone on the big estate and didn’t need to fear break-ins, she worried when he was gone. Since yesterday, the kids had been away, too, ten days of vacation on the Baltic coast with the sports club. That was for the best, after the cops had scared her youngest almost to death with their stupid raid. Not letting him go with his friends and pals on the team would have been sending the wrong signal.
Still, Michaela missed them both. It was quiet in the house without Bernd and the kids. Natasha liked keeping her company, but she was much less talkative than Ludmilla, who had been their previous au pair. Michaela ended her grand tour up front at the workshop. Three of the boys were still there.
“Morning,” Freddy, the foreman, greeted her. “Want some coffee, boss?”
“Morning. Yes, sure,” Michaela said. She sat down on the wooden bench in front of the barn and leaned back against the wall, which was already warm from the sun. Lomax settled down next to her feet with a sigh and laid his snout on his front paws. Only seconds later, Freddy brought her a mug of steaming coffee.
“Shot of milk, two sugars,” he said with a grin. “Everything okay otherwise? Heard anything from the boss?”
“No, afraid not.” Michaela nodded in thanks and sipped at the coffee. “But otherwise, everything’s fine.”
The boys were always so attentive. Sometimes it was almost too much, because they wanted to do everything for her, even the shopping. She reached for the
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tabloid, which one of the men had brought and left lying on the table. She wasn’t that interested in what was going on in the world; all the disasters, wars, and crises just depressed her. She preferred books. Lomax rolled over on his side with a contented rumble, enjoying the warmth of the sun.
Suddenly, Michaela gave a start. The photo of a man jumped out at her and she had to swallow hard. Before she could stop herself, she had read the first few lines, and then she kept reading, as if compelled.
The former industrialist and founder of Sonnenkinder, the shelter for mothers and children, Dr. Josef Finkbeiner, turns eighty years old today. To celebrate the occasion, Finkbeiner, who has already received the Federal Service Cross First Class and the Certificate of Honor from the State of Hessen for his magnanimous charitable works, was honored by his family and numerous guests in the garden of his villa. A further occasion for celebration is the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the Sonnenkinder Association.
The type swam before her eyes as her fingers clutched the handle of the coffee mug. She turned alternately hot and cold. Josef Finkbeiner! Something in her head, something that she and Leonie had laboriously patched together, burst into a thousand pieces. All at once she was again six years old. She was sitting at a big oval table; in front of her lay an open book, and she wished she could read what it said. She could still see the pictures, as if she’d held the book in her hands only yesterday, but it was forty years ago. Michaela Prinzler stared at the photo of the white-haired man, smiling kindly and benevolently into the camera. Oh, how much she had loved him! He’d been the warm sun in her childhood universe. The happiest memories of her childhood, and there weren’t very many, had been inextricably bound to him. For many years, she hadn’t understood what was wrong with her, why in her life there were hours, sometimes even days and weeks, that were missing. They were simply not in her memory any longer. Leonie had discovered that she was not alone in her body. There was not only Michaela. There were others, too, and they all had their own names, their own memories, feelings, preferences, and dislikes. For a long time, Michaela hadn’t wanted to accept this; it sounded totally crazy, and yet it explained the strange and frightening blackouts. Ever since she was a little girl, she’d had to share her time with Tanya, Sandra, Stella, Dorothee, Carina, Nina, Babsi, and many other identities.
“Cut it out, Michaela,” she said out loud to herself. It was dangerous to sink into reminiscences, because she might suddenly slip into one of the other identities, and then she would black out again. Swiftly, she turned the pages of the newspaper, and on the very next page, another familiar face caught her eye.
“Kilian!” she muttered in amazement. Why did he have his picture in
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? She quickly scanned the short caption and shuddered. No! That’s not right. It can’t be true! But Bernd had told her that Leonie was on vacation. She had wondered about that because right now, at this phase of their plan, it was no time to be traveling. But Leonie had done so much for her, she really deserved a vacation. The newspapers said she was dead. And there was a manhunt for Kilian in connection with her death and the attack on the TV host Johanna H.
Michaela felt numb, and her hands were shaking so hard that she could barely hold her coffee cup. Lomax sensed her tenseness; he jumped up and tried to lick her hand.
What was reality? What was she imagining? Had time once again been swallowed up without her noticing? Maybe the kids weren’t on a vacation trip, but had long ago grown up, married, and moved out. And Bernd? Where was he? What day was it? How old was she? Michaela folded up the paper, stuck it in the pocket of her vest, and stood up. She was dizzy. Where the heck was that fairy-tale book she’d just been looking at? Her mother was going to scold her if she’d left it somewhere, because that was a book from her own childhood. Crap! It was here a minute ago. Or was it? She looked around. Where was she anyway? Who were these men?