*
All is in order. My pants are new and clean, the room is rented, and Christian is at the Turkish café when I arrive. I weave through the room of Turks and Syrians and North Africans who are gathered around tiny copper tables sipping at cups of strong tea in glass mugs with filigreed silver handles. A few men in the back are lounging on low couches with red cushions and passing around a shisha pipe. The smoke smells of apples and reminds me of autumn.
Christian rises to his feet when I walk in and moves with effort as he pulls my chair out. He has a black eye, swollen but not too bad. Bruises elsewhere, though, I’m sure. “I’m sorry about last night,” he says shyly.
“You’re sorry? Christian, I’m sorry. It was my fault.”
But he waves this away. “Nothing I couldn’t take.” This said with a kind of pride. He swallows, gives me an anxious smile. “I was worried you wouldn’t want to see me again.”
I place my hand on his. “You saved me last night. I don’t know what he would have done if you didn’t step in.”
“Look, Paulus said if he sees me with you, I’m out. So this, us, has to be on the down low, okay?”
Hence the Turkish café. “Of course.”
The waiter arrives, and Christian orders tea and baklava for us both. “Enough Paulus bullshit. Let’s talk about you,” he says when the waiter’s gone. “Where are you from?”
I give him fleshed-out details from the dossier on Sofia’s life I’d read in Paris. What it was like growing up in my part of Russia. Never enough food and too much violence. Papa drank vodka and couldn’t find work for two years. Mama died of the flu. “I miss the birch forests and the cranes,” I tell him, thinking it sounds like a particularly Russian sort of detail. He nods along, swallowing every bite.
“Not so different, Russia and my part of Germany,” he says.
“Oh?” says eager Sofia just as the tea and baklava arrive.
He tells me about his hometown close to the Polish border, deep in what used to be East Germany. Dad left him when he was six, he says, and mom followed two years later. His grandmother, a sour old communist, raised him to believe in the strengthening power of poverty. Shoes always too small, nothing but potatoes for dinner all winter long.
I pick politely at the baklava on the little plate before us. For Christian, life as a petty gangster is an upgrade. Limited-edition leather jackets and dreams of a TV three meters wide will always beat potatoes for dinner.
When I look up, I see he’s staring at me, eyes soft, his face very close to mine. Time for me to go to work. Time for me to be bold. “I liked that Veronika,” I say. “We talked a lot. Told me all about Gunther and Lukas.”
But Christian isn’t in the mood for Gunther and Lukas. His chair squeaks on the floor as he moves it close to mine. “You know now, don’t you? About the business. About my business. What goes on.”
“But that’s what I like about you. The world doesn’t give you an opportunity, so you just take it anyway. I think you’re brave.” I lean in closer, put my lips very softly against his. It’s a tender kiss, very sweet, and I make sure it lasts a good five seconds before I whisper, “I think it’s exciting, the thing that happened.”
“The thing?” he whispers.
Another kiss, another whisper. “Paris. Veronika said—Paulus took an American.”
But I see right away that I’ve gone too far. Christian leans back suddenly, looks around, wipes his mouth.
“Yeah, that was—a gig, just a job.” He swallows nervously. “Some shit for some Czech. I don’t know—it’s not something we can talk about, okay?”
I cut him off with my lips on his. Longer this time, I cradle his head. Some shit for some Czech. Around us, people turn their heads to gawk.
Christian gently pushes me away. “Jesus, we can’t do that kind of thing here.”
I push back my chair. “So let’s go someplace we can.”
*
Christian walks next to me down a wide boulevard, his hand in mine as I lead him to the hostel. We turn left onto an everyday commercial street of cell phone shops and d?ner restaurants that leads to the U-Bahn stop a few blocks away.
I catch sight of our reflections in the window of a flower shop and catch someone else’s reflection, too. Five or so paces behind us is a very fit guy with Oakley sunglasses covering his eyes. His blond hair is cut short, and he wears jeans and a leather jacket. Nothing wrong with him. Normal. Generic. Just—there. Always five paces behind us.
“We have to be careful,” Christian says.
“Yes, we do.”
“Is your place far?” he says.
“Two stops,” I say.
He’s saying something else now, but I don’t hear it. My attention is on every shopwindow we pass and the fit guy in the Oakleys. You don’t see glasses like those often in Europe. And just then, I pick up another scent, too, this one from across the street. Another very fit guy with short hair, brown this time. No sunglasses on this one, but he’s dressed the same way, leather jacket and jeans, like some sort of uniform. He crosses the street and falls into step beside his twin. No talking between them. Just two guys. Again, totally normal.
I give Christian’s hand a squeeze. “We’re being followed,” I say, just loud enough for him to hear.
I feel his body stiffen next to mine, and he steals a casual look over his shoulder.
“Recognize them?” I ask.
“No,” he says.
“Friends of Paulus?”
“No,” Christian says again. “You better go,” he says. “Straight, then right. You’ll hit a boulevard in two blocks.”
But I need Christian, need whatever information is left in his head. “No. I stay with you.”
In any case, it’s too late for him to protest. The two men are right there, closing the gap, just a pace behind now. The blond one, just behind Christian, flicks his wrist and a metal baton extends from its handle. I hear it whistle through the air toward the back of Christian’s head, but I pull him away and it slams into the meaty part of his shoulder.
The second man circles an arm around my neck, and when I try to drive my elbow into his ribs, he catches it, then slides his hand forward to my wrist. He’s pressing me to the ground and buries his knee in my back. Everything Yael taught me is simply of no use.
Christian is brawling with the blond man but not getting very far. His attacker is clearly well trained and is driving heavy boxer’s blows to Christian’s chest and jaw. Then Christian goes down. His attacker kneels on top of him and—two times, three—smashes Christian’s head to the sidewalk.