“Soon, the world will change. Stay the course. The coming days will be the most difficult of your life. But when this is finished, the world will know the truth: we saved the entire human race from extinction.”
As quickly as it had come, the memory ended, and Desmond was back in the taxi in Berlin, the city flying by in a blur.
Desmond desperately needed to figure out his next move. He needed information, especially about the local area. He drew a twenty-euro note from his pocket and slipped it past the clear plastic security barrier.
“I wonder if you’d be willing to tell me a bit about Berlin. It’s my first time here.”
The driver seemed hesitant at first, but finally began to speak. Driving through the crowded streets, the elderly man spoke with great pride, describing a city that had played a pivotal role in European history for almost a thousand years.
Desmond asked him to discuss the city’s layout, anything remarkable about getting in and out, and the major districts and neighborhoods. The man was wound up now, talking almost without pause, and didn’t seem to mind the direction.
Berlin was a sprawling city that covered over 340 square miles—larger than New York City and nine times the size of Paris. It was also one of the German Republic’s sixteen federal states. Berlin had twelve boroughs, or districts. Each was governed by a council of five and a mayor.
Desmond counted it all as good news. Berlin was a big city—which made it a good place to hide.
The driver told him that Berlin’s new hauptbahnhof was now the largest train station in Europe and that the city also had several rivers and over seventeen hundred bridges—more than Venice. Boat tours were common, and many places in the city could be accessed by boat.
Desmond asked about tourism. The driver, who had lived in East Berlin until the wall fell in 1989, was happy to report that Berlin was currently the most popular tourist destination in Germany and one of the top three in Europe. During the previous year, nearly thirty million people had visited Berlin, which had only three and a half million permanent residents. The influx of tourists had put a strain on the city’s housing market, making it tough for Berliners to find a decent apartment to rent. Many estate agents and other enterprising individuals were now signing annual leases on apartments simply to sublet them to tourists on sites like Airbnb. In fact, the city’s senate had recently passed a law requiring renters to notify their landlord if they were subletting. Still, nearly two-thirds of the twelve thousand apartments for sublet were unregistered and operated illegally.
Desmond turned the facts over in his mind, a plan forming.
From his pocket, he took out the only clue he had about who he was: the coupon for the dry cleaner. He considered asking the driver to take him there, but he knew it was only a matter of time before the police found the elderly man and learned where he had dropped Desmond off. He needed to make his trail disappear.
“What’s Berlin’s busiest tourist attraction?”
“The Brandenburg Gate,” the driver said. “Or perhaps the Reichstag. They are next to each other, so it makes no matter.”
“Drop me there, would you?”
Fifteen minutes later, Desmond paid the driver and exited the cab.
“Be careful,” the older man said before welcoming a new fare and driving away.
From the Brandenburg Gate, Desmond strolled quickly into the Gro?er Tiergarten, Berlin’s oldest park and, at 520 acres, one of the largest urban parks in Germany. It had once been the private hunting reserve for Berlin’s elite, and it retained much of that untouched character. Desmond moved along its walking trails before exiting the park on Tiergartenstra?e, where he hailed a rickshaw. He rode for twenty minutes, until he saw another rickshaw unloading its passenger. He stopped the driver, who seemed to never tire, paid him, and hopped into the other rickshaw. He did the change once more, then got in a cab and showed the driver the coupon from Quality Dry Cleaning for Less.
“Do you know where this address is?”
The driver nodded. “It’s in Wedding, in Mitte.”
“Where’s that?”
“In the center of the city.”
“Perfect. Let’s go there.”
Twenty minutes later, Desmond stood outside the dry cleaner, which was a narrow store with a plate glass fa?ade. The buildings along the street were run-down, but the area was bustling; the sidewalks swarmed with younger people and immigrants from around the world. A cloud of cigarette smoke hung in the air above them, and farther up, satellite dishes lined the roofs. Through open second-story windows, Desmond could hear radio and TV shows in foreign languages—Arabic and Turkish, he thought.
Behind the counter in the dry cleaner, he found a short, bald Asian man with round glasses sewing a shirt. The shopkeeper set down his needle and thread, got off his stool, and nodded once at Desmond.
“I need to pick up.”
“Tag?”
“I don’t have a tag.”
The man slid over to a keyboard and monitor on the counter. “Name?”
“Desmond Hughes.” He spelled it.
As he typed, the shopkeeper said, “ID?”
Desmond stood silently, contemplating what to do.
The shopkeeper eyed him. “No ID, no pickup.”
Desmond held up the police ID he’d taken from the officer in his hotel room. “This is a police investigation. We’re looking for Desmond Hughes.”
The Asian man raised his hands slightly. “Okay, okay.”
The shopkeeper repeated the name, spelling out each letter deliberately as he finished typing the name. He shook his head.
“There’s nothing. No Desmond Hughes.”
Desmond wondered if he had misread the clue. Maybe he was supposed to meet someone here—not pick up his dry cleaning. “How many people work here?”
That seemed to scare the man. “No one. Only me.”
“Look, this has nothing to do with your business or employees. Is there someone else in the back I can talk to?”
“No. No one.”