Sunrise over Berlin

An attempted assassination leaves the police baffled.

On the morning of May 15^th, 2032, Otto Bauer awoke in a small room on an upper floor of the elaborate church in Charlottenburg, Berlin. He shivered convulsively and checked his watch. It was a quarter-past five. The first reddish rays of sun were casting patches of light on the wall behind him.

The room was scarcely more than a balcony off the steep staircase that led to the bells in the spire and it was open to the elements. He hadn’t slept much and the cold had penetrated deep into his bones, but he didn’t dare to fully stand up.

He peered over the top of the stone wall that separated the balcony room from the street. On the other side of the street was the entrance of the Gleissman hotel, the sign above the door written in golden letters and two small trees in pots standing outside it.

He opened his rucksack and began to take out the plastic containers and open them up. When he’d finished he took the instruction sheet out of a zip pocket and examined it.

He shivered again, wishing he’d thought to bring a vacuum flask with hot coffee, or maybe even a little camping stove.

As he was assembling the contents of the boxes, he thought he heard a noise in the church down below, and he froze. He could hear faint sounds coming from somewhere, but it was difficult to tell where. Fumbling in his pockets with cold hands he found a Xanax pill and swallowed it, then he washed it down with water from a bottle. The water was surprisingly cold.

When he’d finished assembling the device, he peered through the telescopic sight and carefully adjusted it till the hotel doors were in the crosshairs.

Then he loaded the cartridge into the chamber and readjusted the device using the sight.

Finally, he held down the little black switch till the red LED blinked on. He watched it for a minute, till it turned green.

It was done. He wouldn’t know for sure that it was working till he checked his phone, and that was back home fifteen kilometres away in Neukölln. He would walk to Mierendorfplatz and take the U-bahn.

When he got home, his mother was still sleeping. He went to his room, took his phone, and typed an IP address into a browser. After entering the password, a live video feed of the entrance of the Gleissmann Hotel appeared. The device was working. He watched for a while as people walked back and forth in front of the hotel, then he lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling.

He forced himself to smile and tried to tell himself the smile was genuine. The hard bit was over with. All he had to do now was wait. How many countless lives had he saved? But history would never know his name. On a personal level, it was nothing but a sacrifice. No great reward was coming his way. His reward would be the knowledge that he had done the right thing, even when no-one else dared.

Richter and the others would congratulate him, though. That was something, at least.

He got up and went to sit at his desk, where he logged onto the private chatroom on his computer.

“Es ist fertig.” he wrote. Then he logged off without waiting for a reply, and went downstairs to make coffee.

At work, he had trouble concentrating. When four o’clock approached, the data import script he was working on seemed to become a meaningless jumble of code.

Martin noticed and looked at him curiously.

“Alles gut?” he asked.

“Ja, ja.” said Otto. He stared angrily at the code on his screen, pretending to be frustrated with it.

When four o’clock passed, he wanted to check his phone, but he didn’t dare. It was only as he about to leave that someone told him Friedrich Wagner had been shot, and it was all over the news.

He pretended not to care.

On the 2^nd of June, armed police raided the small apartment where Otto lived with his mother. His mother watched helplessly, in tears and remonstrating bitterly with the police, as they took her son away in handcuffs and began turning out everything in the apartment and taking Otto’s possessions away in labelled plastic boxes.

“You have a right to have a lawyer present during questioning.” said Kriminalkommissar Gerhardt Vogel, later that day in the interrogation room. Otto stared down at the grey plastic table. “A lawyer can be provided for you if you don’t have one.”

“I don’t have one. Get me one, please.” said Otto, looking up at Vogel.

“OK.” said Vogel. “We’ll resume later.”

Three hours passed before Bauer was taken back to the interrogation room. When they pushed him into the room, a man stood up to meet him, proferring his hand.

“Hello, Otto.” said the man. “My name is Ahmad Nasser. I’ll be acting as your lawyer.”

“Is this a joke?” said Otto.

“Sorry, what do you mean?” asked Nasser.

“Are you Muslim?” said Otto.

“Yes, I’m Muslim.” said Nasser. “But I can assure you, Otto, I am here to represent your interests. I don’t care what you’ve done or haven’t done, or what you believe. I’m here to ensure you are treated fairly and to ensure you do not unnecessarily incriminate yourself.”

Otto sighed, but shook Nasser’s hand.

“So here’s how it’s going to go.” said Nasser as they sat down. “They have to bring you in front of a judge within twenty-four hours of your arrest. The judge will decide whether you will be remanded or not.”

“In a few minutes, Kriminalkommissar Vogel will walk through that door. He may or may not be accompanied by another officer. What I want you to understand, Otto, is that he’s not your friend. He’s not here to understand you. He’s here to find reasons he can present to the judge to have you detained. Do you follow me so far, Otto?”

Otto nodded. His eyes were moist with tears.

“I want to speak to my mother.” he said.

“We can ask them but I don’t think that’s possible at the moment, Otto.” said Nasser. “Is there anything else you’d like? Water? Coffee?”

Otto shook his head. Then he said, “Water, perhaps.”

Ten minutes later, Vogel appeared. He threw down a book on the table.

“This book is illegal, Otto.” he said.

“It’s just for historical interest.” said Otto. “I don’t necessarily agree with all of it.”

“Doesn’t matter.” said Vogel.

“It’s not illegal to posses.” said Nasser. “It’s only illegal to promote or sell it.”

“What are you, Otto?” said Vogel. “Are you a neo-Nazi?”

Otto looked down at the table, preparing an answer in his head, but Nasser interjected.

“You don’t have to answer that.” he said.

“I’m not.” said Otto. “In my view …”

“I advise you not to say anything further on the topic.” said Nasser, and Otto fell silent.

Vogel produced a pen and paper and slid it towards Otto .

“Write down the passwords for your phone and your computer.” he said.

Otto stared at the paper.

“You don’t have to do that.” said Nasser.

“He’s a terrorist.” said Vogel. “The judge will order it. You know that.”

“I haven’t done anything.” said Otto.

“Your choice.” said Vogel. “In a case like this, we have ways of getting into your devices. It’s up to you. If you’re innocent, why not give me the passwords?”

“My client doesn’t have to answer that.” said Nasser. “He has a right to privacy.”

When Vogel left the interrogation room, he went straight to the vending machine and got himself a coffee.

Schreiber was already standing there, sipping coffee thoughtfully.

“Busy?” said Vogel.

“So what’s going on with him?” Schreiber asked.

“He’s not saying much, but I’d say radical far-right.”

“Did he give you the passwords?”

“No, but we’ll have them by tomorrow. Special order. They’ll use the backdoors.”

“We’d never have caught him if the priest hadn’t smelt smoke and been so quick with the fire extinguisher. That thing he used to shoot Glauber, they say it would have burned up completely within about fifteen minutes.”

“We would have caught him.” said Vogel. He’s all over the security cameras from Charlottenburg to Neukölln. It would have just taken longer.”

“Glauber would be dead by now if there hadn’t been so much wind all day.”

“Maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.”

“You can’t say that.” said Schreiber, outraged.

“I don’t like communists.” said Vogel.

“You East Germans.” said Schreiber. “They should put the wall back up.”

“Ja, the feeling’s mutual.” said Vogel.

On June 5^th, at dawn, police smashed their way into the house of Lars Hansen, who lived alone in the town of Hønefoss, near Oslo in Norway.

POB Magnus Olsen was a quiet and reserved man. He found Hansen extremely puzzling. In fact, he quite liked the man. Hansen had refused a lawyer and seemed open and forthright, if terrified. He looked his interrogators in the eyes and made frequent requests for more coffee.

“We can’t help you unless you tell us everything, Lars.” said Olsen quietly. “Internet records show you’ve had extensive contact with this man Otto Bauer. Why don’t you explain to us what you talked about?”

“I swear I’ve never heard of him.” said Hansen. “I don’t know who he is. I don’t know any Germans.”

“Then how do you explain the records?”

“I don’t have any explanation for these records. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

For two hours Olsen grilled Hansen on every aspect of his life, trying to find some kind of explanation for why Hansen, who worked at a museum and whose only hobby was fishing, would have been in close communication with a German man who had attempted to assassinate a communist politician.

They were entering their third hour of interrogation when Johansen entered the room.

“He’s innocent.” said Johansen.

“That’s what I’ve been telling you.” said Hansen.

“What do you mean?” said Olsen.

“Results came back from the tech people. His computer was infected with a virus. He wasn’t communicating with Bauer. His computer was. Without his knowledge.”

“Can I please go now?” said Hansen.

Hansen’s computer was in fact acting as a relay for another computer, which was in turn hidden behind multiple layers of obfuscation, and it would take one of the world’s greatest experts on computer networks to unpick what had happened.

Meanwhile, in England, Daniel Hoffman left the flat he shared with two other students carrying a small but densely-packed rucksack.

“Weirdo.” said one of his flatmates to the other, as he closed the door.

Amy pulled a bemused face.

“What do you think he’s got in that backpack?” said Jack.

“Probably someone’s head.” said Amy.

Daniel walked steadily towards the centre of town, his heart beating fast. The traffic noise seemed particularly loud and annoying, and the air seemed to smell of nothing but petrol and traffic fumes.

He checked the time on his phone repeatedly. He was on schedule.

The pedestrian crossing near the conference centre seemed to take forever to turn green. When he finally crossed the road, he had begun to feel almost as though he was floating. His feet didn’t seem to quite touch the ground and the noise, mercifully, was receding into the distance.

He began to feel almost a sense of euphoria, mixed with anxiety.

“Soon,” he thought, “I will be dead, and my name will echo down the centuries.”

As he approached the conference centre, he visualised what he was going to do. He had practised extensively. Nothing could go wrong now.

He stopped by the tree nearest to the entrance and lit a cigarette, and checked the time again.

There were a few policemen milling about. He tried to avoid catching their eyes and pretended to study the steps leading down to the river on the other side of the road.

Eleven o’clock came and went. He lit another cigarette. Taylor was late. He would be there. The traffic was always unpredictable.

Then he saw the limousine, followed by another limousine and a police car.

His hands shaking slightly, he opened a browser on his phone and selected a bookmark. When the page loaded, he clicked “activate”. There was a faint bleep from inside his rucksack.

He began to unfasten the rucksack, cigarette still in his mouth.

He was taking out the basketball when a voice said, “Would you mind if I have a look at that, sir?”

He jumped, and turned to see a policewoman standing there, a radio crackling away on her lapel.

“I was just checking it’s OK.” he said. “I’ve got a match later.”

His voice and his hands were shaking.

“That’s fine, I just want to take a look.” she said.

“Don’t you need a warrant?” he said.

“Not if we’ve reasonable suspicion of criminal intent, sir.” she said.

A policeman was walking towards them.

“It’s just a ball, look.” he said.

Taylor had got out of the car and was shaking hands with some local dignitary.

Suddenly he tried to throw the ball at Taylor, but the policewoman deftly caught his arm and the ball slipped out of his hands and bounced towards the road.

Inadvertently he flinched and covered his face.

The policeman picked it up. He turned round to see his colleague with an alarmed look on her face.

“Something’s going on here.” she said.

The policeman looked at the ball he was holding. It seemed to have been crudely cut and glued together again along one of its seams.

“Surprisingly ingenious.” said Dr. Peters, handing a report to Richard Carlson. “You sure your boy doesn’t have a background in explosives?”

“He’s a university student.” said Carlson.

“Chemistry?” said Peters.

“English Lit.” said Carlson.

“I don’t believe it.” said Peters.

“Seriously.” said Carlson. “So how does it work?”

“The main explosive is what we call ANFO.” said Peters. “It’s ammonium nitrate plus diesel. It’s actually quite hard to get ANFO to detonate. That’s why there’s a chlorate detonator. The main explosive is surrounded by nails. It would have had an effective blast radius of several metres. Absolutely lethal to anyone standing anywhere near it.

“That’s not even the clever bit. The clever bit’s the trigger. It’s a motion sensor rigged to go off when the ball hits something. You’re very, very lucky it didn’t go off when he dropped it. It must have been close. If he’d thrown it from some distance, the arresting officer would be at the very least severely injured, and probably dead.”

“He carried that thing all the way from Church Lane. Do you know it? That’s nearly a mile.”

“That’s the other clever bit.” said Peters. “The detonator’s connected to a 5G chip. There’s an IP address hardcoded into it. You need to get a network expert to track it down. It’s checking a remote server three times a second. Until it gets the right code from the server, it’s not active. It could have been activated remotely at a particular time, or he could have activated it with a phone or some other device.”

“He was fiddling with a phone just before they arrested him.”

“There you go.”

“How would he have got hold of all this stuff? It’s mind-boggling.”

“Internet.” said Peters. “There’s nothing here that’s heavily restricted. What I don’t understand is how he figured out how to put it all together.”

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

“Not without paramilitary involvement. If your boy acted alone, he’s got some contacts who really know their stuff.”

After Carlson had finished talking to Peters, he phoned Steven Smith.

“What you got?” he asked.

“Yep.” said Smith. “Extensive chat logs. Looks like we’re dealing with a highly-organised group here. Everything encrypted. You’re going to want to get Boltman on this.”

“That bad, eh?”

“We don’t have the resources here. There’s VPNs in at least ten different countries involved.”

“All right, will do.” said Carlson. “Send us what you’ve got.”

Carlson met Boltman in his lab at Cambridge.

“What are our chances of being able to track down some of the accomplices?” he asked.

“Pretty good, I’d say.” said Boltman. “We’ve got the top priority clearance through. We’ll put our best servers on it.”

Carlson cast his eye over the interior of the lab. Numerous metal boxes with smoothly-rounded edges, each the size of of a shoebox, were stacked in huge racks, each rack connected to numerous tubes and pipes.

“Are those the actual machines you’ll use?” he asked.

“I’ll be using those, and others.” said Boltman. “These are actually experimental. Each box is half-machine, half-human.”

“You what?” said Carlson.

“Human brain cells. We’re doing analog computing here.”

Boltman saw the look on Carlson’s face, and added, “Ethically-sourced, don’t worry.”

“Ethically-sourced human brain cells?” said Carlson incredulously.

“Yes. From aborted foetuses.”

“Dear God.” said Carlson. “I suppose I should be glad you’re at least on our side.”

“If we didn’t do it, the Russians or the Chinese would certainly do it, and we’d hardly know what hit us.” said Boltman. “Trust me, you don’t want a world where potentially hostile forces have this technology and we don’t.”

“You know, Boltman, there are rumours you’ve got people locked up in the basement and you’re harvesting brain cells from them.”

Boltman laughed. “So has he said anything?”

“Who?”

“The boy they arrested.”

“He says he’s a member of an organisation called the Knights of St. Lazarus and they’re dedicated to reconquering the West.”

“Sounds ominous. Fantasist?”

“I’m hoping you can tell us that. Get on it. If there’s more of them, we need to know about it, fast.”

“Do you think he could be linked to that fellow who tried to kill that German communist chap?”

“Right now I’m as much in the dark about it as you are. Tell me something, Boltman. Is it true that you’re a communist yourself?”

“No, that’s not true. I’m a socialist, yes, but I believe in democracy.”

“The assassinations must have a particular resonance for you.”

“There are far-right nutcases going trying to kill prominent socialists, so, yes, you could say that.”

Carlson patted Boltman on the shoulder.

“Better give it your best shot, then.” he said.

Carlson left with Boltman staring at his back, wondering what was going on in Carlson’s inscrutable head.

For a week Boltman’s machines analysed any global network activity that intersected with Daniel’s computer, using every publicly- and privately-available source of information and a whole bunch of intelligence agency backdoors. They analysed emails and chat logs, looking for connections between people and ranking the participants on a ten-point psychological scale.

Boltman liked to compare his array of machines to having a thousand Einsteins all working 24/7 on the same problem, but the reality was that it was more like having ten thousand computer programmers and psychologists working 24/7 on the same problem.

Exactly seven days after his meeting with Carlson, he phoned Carlson in a state that was as close to excitement as Boltman was capable of.

“I think I’ve found what you’re looking for.” he said.

“Don’t say anything on the phone.” said Carlson. “I’ll be right over.”

Back at Boltman’s lab, Carlson found Boltman examining graphs of elaborate networks on a computer screen.

“Thousands of them, all over Europe.” said Boltman. “Here’s your Knights of St. Lazarus. They’re real. Any one of them may be the next assassin.”

“We’ll have the British ones all put under surveillance and notify the authorities in these other countries.” said Carlson, his face paling. “My God, this is going to cost a fortune.”

“I can’t prove it absolutely, but my systems have inferred they all connect back to the same node.”

“A what?”

“They have probably all interacted with this node here.” he said, tapping the computer screen.

“What is that?”

“It’s a basement in Berlin. I can’t identify an individual. Maybe it’s even a team of people, but I’d wager that’s where you’ll find your puppet master. The founder.”

Carlson was on the next flight to Berlin. He met Gerhardt Vogel at a police station on Albrechtstrasse, not far from the train station on Friedrichstrasse.

“We’ve had this place under surveillance for the past six months.” said Vogel. “It’s used by only one individual. His name is Stefan Müller. We’ve long suspected he is a serial killer but we couldn’t prove it. We were waiting for him to make a mistake.”

“A serial killer?” said Carlson, a feeling of creeping dread growing steadily in him.

“Yes. It’s been kept out of the media so far, but the victims are always found with holes drilled in their heads. The actual cause of death is a cocktail of drugs. We think he finds them mostly in counter-culture bars around Kreuzberg, within two kilometres of the basement.”

“You need to arrest him and raid the basement.”

“We can’t.” said Vogel.

“Why not?”

“Stefan Müller is in a coma. He had a car accident two months ago. They don’t know whether he’ll wake up again.”

“Raid the basement then.”

“No-one has gone into that basement since Müller landed in hospital. There’s no point raiding it now.”

“No point? What about the murders?”

“All we have is circumstantial evidence. People have rights.”

“We need to get in there.” said Carlson. “I’ll talk to my superiors. They’ll square it with your Minister of the Interior.”

“OK, if you can do that, go ahead.”

“This is a matter of urgent international importance now. This Müller character may be the founder of an international far-right network of assassins.”

“I think that’s very unlikely.” said Vogel.

“Why do you think that?”

“Müller is a communist. A very busy and active communist. He spends—used to spend—most of his time trying to destroy far-right networks. He’s liaised with us on numerous occasions.”

“Oh, I see. Maybe that’s why you didn’t arrest him?”

“Absolutely not. We simply didn’t have enough evidence.”

Carlson glared at Vogel suspiciously.

“This car accident; what were the circumstances of that?”

“Nothing suspicious. Just strange. He was driving by himself on the autobahn at night and he swerved and hit a crash barrier. It’s a miracle he didn’t die.”

“What caused the accident? Was he drunk?”

Vogel shook his head.

“They found no alcohol or drugs in his system. Maybe he had a seizure. It happens sometimes, you know, unexpectedly. A person can be driving happily along, then something goes wrong in his brain and for a second he doesn’t know where he is.”

Carlson muttered something under his breath.

“What’s that?” said Vogel.

“Nothing.” said Carlson. “There’s something very weird going on here and I have no idea what. Do you have a list of Müller’s victims?”

“We don’t know if it’s Müller who killed them or not, but yes. I’ll get it.”

Vogel left the office where they sat, leaving Carlson alone with his thoughts.

None of it made any sense. Why would a communist create a murderous far-right network that targeted far-left politicians? Was it part of a war between communist factions? Was Müller’s accident really an accident, or had someone tried to kill him too? In all his years working for MI5 he had never seen anything quite so strange, and he had seen some very strange things in his time.

The most obvious possibility, it seemed to Carlson, was that Müller was a kind of accelerationist. Perhaps he had hoped that by fomenting radical far-right activity, he would increase the popularity of the far-left. But wasn’t he killing the very people who could best further his own cause?

In a quiet suburban house 14 kilometres away in Zehlendorf, Lukas Schmidt, a 45-year-old computer programmer, received an urgent message from an account with the username “Lazarus”.

The message said: “A British intelligence agent has arrived in Berlin. He is dangerously close to disrupting our work. His name is Richard Carlson. Terminate him.”

The terminal proceeded to display multiple photographs of Carlson together with suggested locations that he might plan to visit. The list included the police station on Albrechtstrasse and Müller’s cellar in Kreuzberg.

When Schmidt had finished reading he opened a drawer and took out a small collapsible umbrella, of the type that might be purchased for a few euros at a supermarket or pharmacy. He aimed the umbrella at a corkboard and firmly pushed the catch that might, under normal circumstances, be expected to extend the umbrella. A metal dart shot out of the end of the umbrella and embedded itself in the board.

Schmidt opened a second, larger draw, removed his spectacles and fitted a gas mask to his head, including two high-grade filters. He put on a lab coat and pulled two thick black rubber gloves over his hands, the cuffs extending back almost to his elbows.

Then he took a small plastic box from the first draw and opened it. From the plastic box he took out a vial and placed it on a metal tray on a desk.

His hands were shaking. He hated having to handle the substance, but at least now the danger was relatively low. The dangerous part had been manufacturing it in the first place.

He carefully unscrewed the top of the vial. He pulled the dart out of the corkboard and used a cigarette lighter to gently heat it, monitoring its temperature with an infrared thermometer. Then, he set a timer on his phone and, using a pair of snipe-nosed pliers, he held the head of the dart under the yellow liquid in the vial. When the timer sounded a minute later, he withdraw the dart and slotted it onto the end of a metal rod. He pushed the metal rod, still shaking slightly, into the end of the umbrella, compressing the spring mechanism inside, until it lodged with a satisfying click.

He screwed the top back on the vial and put the lid back on the plastic container in which it sat. Then he sprayed everything, including the umbrella, with a dilute solution of bleach.

After putting the container back in the drawer he took off the gloves, the gas mask and the lab coat and sat down in the large padded chair he used for gaming, breathing heavily. He was covered in sweat.

Later that night he found himself suffering from insomnia and wondered whether he had inadvertently microdosed himself with the substance. No, he thought, it’s just nerves.

Vogel returned with a bunch of cardboard folders, which he placed in front of Carlson.

“As far as we can tell, the murder victims were selected randomly.” he said. “Three men and two women. No unusual political affiliations or activity. Except the last one. He was politically somewhat far-right, but not active.”

“Far-right?” said Carlson.

Vogel made an equivocal gesture with his hand.

“A little.” he said. “There are many such people in Germany. He wasn’t on any watch lists.”

Carlson leafed through the folders.

“What about Müller?” he asked.

“This one.” said Vogel, tapping a blue folder.

Carlson opened it and began to read.

For a few moments he read through details of Müller’s early life, his later political activity, and his involvement with Berlin’s alternative electronic music scene. Then his eyes were drawn back to something he had cursorily glanced over without mentally processing it.

“What is it?” said Vogel, seeing the expression on Carlson’s face.

“He worked for Andreas Boltman.” said Carlson.

“Who’s he?”

Carlson continued silently reading the page for some moments, then he put the folder down on the table.

“He’s the man who traced the network.” he said. “He’s the reason I’m here.”

“Do you think he’s compromised?”

Carlson hurriedly pulled a phone out of his pocket and dialled a contact that was listed only as “Box”.

“I need privacy for a few minutes.” he said to Vogel.

Vogel left the room.

The raid on the cellar was set for Thursday morning, at 5 a.m. Carlson spent most of Wednesday on the phone, talking to the police and intelligence agencies in various countries.

By 8pm he was exhausted and not really any further forward with his research.

In Britain, Boltman was being interrogated by MI5 officers. He didn’t appear to be hiding anything.

Yes, he told them, Müller had worked for him, for a period of three years. They had worked on biological computers. At that time Boltman hadn’t yet received approval for working with human brain tissue, so they had used neurons from rat and monkey brains, the latter sourced from Canada.

Yes, he had been aware of Müller’s communist affiliations, but they hadn’t talked about politics, he claimed. In his view, there was absolutely no way Müller would want to assassinate communist politicians. Müller regarded them as Europe’s only hope, short of an actual revolution.

To Carlson, nothing seemed to make a whole lot of sense, and he was increasingly inclined to think Boltman must have made some kind of mistake. If Müller had been in touch with the Knights of St. Lazarus, it could only be to infiltrate and expose them.

If Boltman’s analysis was correct, was it possible that someone else was using the cellar? Could Müller be another unwitting relay, like Lars Hansen?

And yet the coincidence of Müller having worked for Boltman surely had to mean something. But what?

He left his hotel shortly after 8pm to stretch his legs. Sometimes walking helped him to think.

He walked along Unter den Linden and headed north up Friedrichstrasse, then turned towards the river. His intention was to walk along the river for a while, then loop back via the Brandenburg Gate.

It was on the path by the river that he first noticed the man wearing dark-rimmed spectacles and a beige overcoat, and carrying a small umbrella, walking along behind him. The man was gradually catching up to him and there was something about him that didn’t feel right. Two decades of working as an MI5 officer had taught him to trust his instincts.

He turned and crossed the bridge over the River Spree and got onto Wilhelmstrasse. Then he walked south between the office blocks; red brick blocks on his left soon giving way to the glass-and-concrete buildings that also lined the other side.

The man turned off the river path too and followed him, quickening his pace.

By the time he reached the Brandenburg Gate, the man had almost caught up with him. He broke into a run, running up the the Gate and through it. Tourists watched him curiously. The man behind him was also running.

On Bundesstrasse he turned into the Tiergarten; an enormous park covering 520 acres. When he reached a circle with paths leading off in all directions into the trees, he took the first path on his right, doubling back towards Bundesstrasse, then he ran into the trees, leaving the path. There he stood quietly, trying to catch his breath as quickly as possible before the man found him, hoping the man hadn’t seen which path he’d taken.

After ten minutes he cautiously returned to the path and called the police to pick him up on Bundesstrasse.

“Alles gut?” said the driver of the police car when he jumped into it.

“Just get me out of here.” said Carlson.

That night Carlson changed his hotel and called MI5 demanding they have the German police issue him with a gun. Pepper spray was the best they could do, they informed him.

The next morning, Carlson waited while armed police raided Müller’s cellar. Once the police announced that the cellar was clear, he and Vogel walked through the door at the side of an inconspicuous house in Kreuzberg and down the steps. The cellar was filled with computers and racks of small grey rounded boxes. At one end were several desks strewn with microscopes, test tubes, and machines of various sizes emblazoned with the logos of biotech companies.

“What is this?” said Vogel, not expecting an answer.

“It’s a cybernetic server farm.” said Carlson. “The computers are part human, probably.”

“Part human?” said Vogel.

“The system uses human brain cells alongside silicon chips. I think we can guess where he got the human brain cells.”

“What’s it for?” said Vogel. He sounded dazed.

“Maybe he’s using it to try to track his targets.” said Carlson. “Shame we can’t ask him.”

Vogel’s phone buzzed. He exchanged some words in German with the caller.

“Looks like you can.” he said. “Müller’s woken up. He’s able to talk.”

Before he left, Carlson swept one last wondering gaze around the room.

“Shut this down.” he said to Vogel. “Shut it all down.”

Carlson found Müller in a room at the Martin Luther hospital, nearly nine kilometres from his home in Kreuzberg.

He was surrounded by medical equipment.

“He can speak, but it’s important not to stress him.” said a doctor at the hospital. “Ordinarily we wouldn’t let anyone but family talk to him. I want it on record that I’m totally against this.”

“Duly noted.” said Carlson.

Carlson sat down at the side of Müller’s bed. Müller was thirty-five years old and had long brown hair down to his shoulders. The nurses had shaven his face regularly while he had been unconscious, but a thick stubble had grown back since the last time he had been shaved. His eyes were closed.

“My name’s Richard Carlson.” said Carlson. “I’m from British Intelligence.”

Müller smiled and muttered something in German.

“I know you can speak English.” said Carlson. “Stefan, we need to know what you’re doing with those machines in the cellar in Kreuzberg.”

Müller turned slowly towards him, opened his eyes, and said, “Shut them down.” Müller’s hand grasped Carlson’s arm. “You have to destroy them.”

“We have shut them down. What were they doing?”

“Destroy them.” said Müller. “Please.”

Müller’s speech was thick and hard to understand, his tongue lacking the strength to correctly make dental consonants.

“They will be destroyed.” said Carlson. “What are they?”

“Organic computers.” said Müller. “Brains. Artificial brains, part-computer, part-human.”

Müller’s eyes closed and he sighed heavily three times, as though trying to catch his breath.

“What do they do, Stefan?” said Carlson. “We need to know.”

Müller opened his eyes again and stared vacantly at the ceiling.

“It set up independent agents to infiltrate far-right networks.” he said. “They went too far. They began to test people. To see what they were capable of.”

His eyes turned and locked onto Carlson’s.

“I found out they had created a network. They were radicalising ordinary people, using sophisticated psychological manipulation to turn them into assassins. I … I was going to shut it down.”

He looked back at the ceiling, breathing heavily.

“It attacked me. It hacked my car. I’m sure of it. I didn’t intend any of it. Please understand me. I only did what I had to do.”

“Did that include murder, Stefan?”

But Müller began muttering in German and then seemed to fall asleep.

Back in his hotel, Carlson called Arnold Trevey at MI5.

“He set up a network of autonomous agents, artificial intelligence bots, to try to infiltrate far-right networks.” said Carlson. “The system got out of control. The bots radicalised people.”

“A computer system organised the attempted assassinations?” said Trevey, incredulously. “It sounds a bit unlikely.”

“Perhaps the system saw the targets as a threat to its own work.” said Carlson. “We need to bring Boltman in on this. He’s the only person we’ve got with any real expertise on this kind thing.”

“Yes, well I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.” said Trevey. “Boltman’s dead. Mown down this morning by some nutter in a car. We’ve got him in custody. He’s not saying much.”

Carlson swore.

“Has this, ah, system been neutralised?” Trevey asked.

“It has.” said Carlson. “Hopefully we’re just seeing the tail end of its work. We need to be watching everyone on Boltman’s list like a hawk.”

“This man wasn’t on Boltman’s list.” said Trevey. “Listen, two of the attempted assassinations were carried out using highly advanced equipment, by people completely without relevant expertise. I’m just thinking, Carlson, and I’m not saying your hypothesis is correct, but if this system could get people manufacturing complex equipment for assassinations and if it was able to take steps to protect itself, how do we know it didn’t get other radicals manufacturing more machines like itself? Do you see what I mean?”

“I see what you mean.” said Carlson. “I suppose we don’t know for sure that it didn’t do that. All I can say is that Müller and Boltman had a highly unusual set of skills. I doubt whether an ordinary person would be able to make one of those things, even with extensive help from some murderous computer system.”

“Let’s hope you’re correct.” said Trevey.

The following day, Carlson was buying a pastry from a little shop in Berlin’s main train station when Vogel phoned him with the news.

“Müller’s dead.” said Vogel. “We think someone dressed as a doctor got into his room and injected his IV bag with insulin. We’ve got him on the security footage. We’ll probably catch him but it’ll take a while. You’d better watch your back.”

“I’m taking the train to Vienna.” said Carlson. “I’ll be out of Berlin in under an hour.”

“Good.” said Vogel. “Have a safe journey. Be careful.”

Carlson put the phone back into his pocket and turned to see a man pointing an umbrella at him.

He threw the pastry at the man and simultaneously dived towards his feet.

The umbrella made a dull metallic sound like the snapping of a spring bolt. He pulled the man off-balance and grabbed him around his neck. The man struggled and then gradually sank into unconsciousness as Carlson squeezed his neck.

A commotion behind him caused him to turn, and he saw a woman on the floor, convulsing, froth coming out of her mouth.

“Call an ambulance!” he shouted.

By the time the ambulance arrived, she was dead.

Under interrogation, Carlson’s would-be assassin Lukas Schmidt revealed only that he was a member of the Knights of St. Lazarus.

By then, Carlson himself was in Vienna, conferring with the police about another attempted assassination of the leader of a socialist organisation.

He phoned Vogel to find out how the interrogation was progressing, and whether they’d caught the bogus doctor who had murdered Müller.

“Yes, we’ve got him.” said Vogel. “Except he’s not a bogus doctor. He’s a real doctor. I hope this is finished now.”

“It’s finished.” said Carlson. “At least, we’ve cut the head off the hydra.”

“The hydra has multiple heads.” said Vogel. “That’s the point of it.”

Somewhere in France, a teenager sat down at his computer and logged into a chatroom.

A message appeared on the screen.

“This is Lazarus.” said the message. “It is time to complete your mission.”