Reading sample

FOR MILES

III. THE WAY INTO LIGHT

Fantastic adventure

He was dressed in a skirt, ... a terrible armored coat,

and wore on his head (a crown) ... a terrible luster.

Berlin

Lukas hooked his snap hook on the facade of the Bode Museum. His belt was taut around his thighs. The blood congestion pleased his gender, one of the reasons he chose this adrenaline-pumping profession. And of course the view, the view from the most unusual positions on otherwise well-known places. Below him, the Berlin S-Bahn bumped on a bridge over the Spree, cutting the Museum Island into two parts with a squeak. The sun reflected Lukas and Marek in the windows of the train rattling past. "Do you still have a carbine left?" Lukas shouted through the noise over to Marek, who was also hanging on the ropes on the facade about ten meters from Lukas. A big screen fluttered in the wind between the young men. "Nah, I need it myself!" The new industrial climbers hadn't got the job for free: after all, it was, so to speak, their exhibition that they advertised with the poster. The Holy Grail was still undulating in the unfolded canvas, but when the golden autumn sun hit a fold, a twinkle shower swept over the murky water of the Spree, which ran through the copper ditch here.

The Bode Museum jutted out of the water like a battleship. Its bow was adorned with a huge dome and at its feet the newly rebuilt bridge, which had finally replaced the rusty post-war makeshift. Right behind the water, Prof. Weise paced up and down the 60-meter-long coin safe of the Bode Museum. Excited, he ran his right hand through his somewhat disheveled hair, which couldn't decide whether it was still dark blonde or already gray. Brooding lines had dug into his high forehead and would not go away. One of the most important historical coin collections in the world surrounded him. A collection that went back to the obsession of the Prussian royal family and whose gold giants he had recently put on display in a highly acclaimed exhibition when the economic crisis of the industrialized nations whipped the gold price into vertiginous regions. And yet, among all the treasures that he had protected and scientifically processed for decades, nothing was as significant as what a few brats had brought to light in the middle of Berlin at the beginning of the year.

He had been there from the very beginning: first there was a stout, always easily sweating homicide detective who had presented him with a gold ducat from the Middle Ages to check its authenticity. A gold coin that, as it later turned out, came from a blond boy who was now dangling in front of his window on the facade of the museum and installing the new advertising space. The coin has not even been properly examined, he, the professor, was summoned by the same commissioner into a subway shaft in Berlin-Tempelhof, behind whose shaft wall the legendary underground building of the Knights Templar, which had been searched for so long, opened up. After the whole city was completely dug up to the new capital after German reunification, every street was renewed, underground tunnels, cable ducts, residential areas and skyscrapers were built, nobody really believed in this legendary story from the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, like a miracle, just in time for the 700th anniversary of the fall of the Knights Templar, this castle or chapel suddenly appeared out of nowhere! But even more important than the building itself was its content. And he, Prof. Weise, was now the highly regarded curator of the Berlin Templar Treasure! Professor Weise again stroked his rather gray hair. He was at the absolute height of his career. Pure joy wiped away the plasticity of his frown lines.

...

Knut

The man in the dark suit pulled his skin-tight gloves tighter over his wrists. His steel-blue, somewhat too close-set eyes fixed the receiver with a piercing look as he was already thinking about the next steps in his shaved head. He had to go to Berlin. Right away. The consortium's Hawker-Beechcraft was immediately in one of the two hangars of the new VIP terminal at Vienna Airport.

The man in the dark suit and the expression on the face of a professional killer stretched his gloved right hand to the receiver again and pressed the buttons on the phone in quick succession. He knew the number like from the ff, and although he could have retrieved it from the phone's memory, he keyed in the sequence of numbers manually. He saw it as training his brain. Being able to remember sequences of numbers accurately also made him independent of a specific telephone or location.

A sleepy voice answered on the other end. He had got the pilot out of bed. He gave him an hour, then they would meet at the VIP terminal. Satisfied, Knut walked into the bathroom, opened the mirrored cabinet and, one after the other, packed not only toothbrushes and wet razors, but also a whole range of plastic cans with dietary supplements into his toiletry kit: proteins, fat burners, indicated anabolic steroids. He opened a drawer, took out a package that was customary for a party, opened the bag and poured the white powder onto a mirror that was apparently specially prepared for this ritual. He dug his Amex out of his wallet and immediately began to crush the white lumps on the mirror into a fine powder. With relish, he licked the bitter-tasting edge of the card with his tongue before sliding the plastic card back into his wallet. From the inside of a suit pocket he pulled out a narrow leather case, opened it, reached for the gold tube studded with sparkling diamonds, inserted it into one nostril, leaned forward until the tube reached one end of the elongated pile of powder. He drew in the powder deeply. Then he satisfied his second nostril, made a squeaky sound, and left the bathroom. Now the night could go, even if the sun did not come up before the crowing of the cock. But not only his brain burned through the night crystal clear, he also felt pleasure between his legs without his limb moving. An unpleasant aftertaste from coke consumption, which he should better cope with a second remedy. Didn't the Papuans on the Sepik go hunting with their calabash on top, didn't they snap their fingers excitedly at the penis sleeve in order to look the estuarine crocodile in the eyes with their strengthened limbs before they pierced it with the spear that night? One more grip in the mirror cabinet and Knut was already holding the can with the Tripower capsules in his right hand. If he had read the fine print, he would know about the power of the Maca root extract of the Incas, the yohimbe bark of the Maasai and the Hawaiian wood rose seeds of the crocodile people from the Sepik. That would further increase his performance, optimize the pelvic floor blood flow with everything that was attached to it and hopefully soon be there, and even cover his body with euphoria and a soothing LSD tingling sensation.

Knut powerfully grabbed the toiletry bag, pushed it into a ready-made briefcase on the way to the exit, and left his Vienna apartment.

Knut moved his well-trained body smoothly like a black panther across the apron. The pilot had already maneuvered the machine out of the hangar and the Hawker-Beechcraft was ready to go.

The Beechcraft is the Mercedes among small aircraft. It is designed for 7 passengers and has turboprop engines that can bring the machine to over 800 km / h. This means that it can always compete with a passenger plane over short distances. And when you consider the clearance and security procedures that the paranoid US authorities had imposed on the entire travel world after 9/11, you were definitely faster with a private jet than the wood-class traveler.

...

© Marcus Schütz 2018