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♫ Silencer ♫
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I enter the corridor leading to the “Room of Silence” inside the Brandenburg Gate. Before Uwe Albo called me, I had no idea a place like this even existed. “Silence” is written on the wall in various languages. A pretty fitting place for Easter, really, but I already have a bad feeling about what’s waiting for me here.
Everything is cordoned off. Albo’s colleagues recognize me and wave me through. The detective himself stands in the small, unadorned meditation room like a lumberjack in a perfume shop. My gaze immediately drops to the floor, and sure enough, right on cue: in the middle of the room lies a stack of paper, topped with a bloody lump of meat.
“Another heart,” Albo says when he sees me. “Number three.”
A sharp wave of his hand scatters the young officers. We’re alone. “This room is locked at night. Yet this morning, the heart was sitting right here.” Albo grabs my arm. I can clearly see the whites of his eyes. “That bastard scares me, you know? He writes a story every day on one of his typewriters, and whenever he finishes his run of fifty typewriters, he calmly drops another one of his hearts somewhere in Berlin—without us getting an inch closer to catching him!”
I can smell Albo’s breath; he’s standing that close. Is this a cry for help? Is he cracking? Is he at the end of his rope? But Albo relaxes his grip, lets go, and clenches both fists. His eyes narrow to slits as he says, menacingly low, “I’m gonna nail him with these bare hands, and once I’ve got him, he can play all the hide-and-seek he wants in the cell where he’ll spend the rest of his life.”
He looks at me, as if looking for backup. I give him a stern nod. That seems to satisfy him. “Come on, let’s move. Forensics can handle the rest.”
Later in Albo’s office, we study copies of the new texts. Familiar themes, new twists—the playful, compulsive streak shines through again and again.
“I paid the Integralists a visit,” I say. Albo looks up, intrigued, having clearly forgotten he asked me to infiltrate Berlin’s Integral scene in the first place. “Decent people across the board who think they’ve found the Philosopher’s Stone—a kind of cut crystal with a whole range of facets that all need to be accounted for when looking at humanity and the world.”
“Facets?” Albo asks, frowning.
“Yeah, just like the killer’s texts. Everything can be viewed from different angles and perspectives…”
“Which I can then conveniently pick and choose from.”
I shake my head. “No, no—the whole point of the integral approach is that it’s holistic. You don’t just limit yourself to single aspects.”
“In other words: you felt right at home with them.”
“Point is, it’s a philosophy that values life in all its forms. It doesn’t breed killers, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Albo scratches his stubble. “So where do we find him then?” I rap my knuckles against my stack of copies. Our only lead.
A uniformed officer with a goatee and ponytail knocks on the open door to grab our attention. Albo steps over to him. I immerse myself in the pages in front of me. There’s mention of a twin. Interesting. A lead to the victims, the first two of whom were apparently identical twins? “Then get back to work!” I hear Albo bark.
Snorting, he comes back into the office, waving a thin folder. “The heart’s got the same DNA as the other two.”
“A third identical twin?” I ask, surprised. “Is that even a thing? Identical triplets?”
Albo slams the file onto his desk with a loud bang. “They’re so rare that every single one of them is registered. But none of this makes sense, quite apart from the fact that no pair of triplets has been reported missing.”
I let his “pair of triplets” slide. “Then they must be unregistered triplets. Or the lab made a mistake…”
Albo nods, looking suddenly exhausted. “Told them the same thing. They need to recheck everything, step by step.”
“—Or,” I continue, “they’re clones.”
Albo stares at me. “Those were three hearts from adult human beings,” he says hoarsely. I nod.
Albo leans heavily on his desk and looks me dead in the eye, worn out. “Officially, human clones don’t exist—and certainly not adults.”
I nod again. “Officially,” I say.
“Man,” Albo groans, slumping into his office chair. “Houston, we have a problem.”