Torsten's voice suddenly crackles in Stefan's earpiece.
"The robbers are leaving the auction house. Take position around the construction site and be ready to apprehend them as they emerge from the pit."
Stefan takes out his badge and drapes it on a chain around his neck, McGrave-style, so it hangs over his Kevlar vest.
He looks cool and he knows it. If only there was someone around to take a picture.
Stefan alerts his team with a few tactical hand signals, which he's been practicing with his girlfriend for months while shopping at the enormous and crowded KaDeWe, and they move out the door with professional resolve and military precision.
####
The five-story air-raid bunker that houses the Balz Collection is a monstrous symmetrical block of exposed reinforced concrete, its six-foot-thick walls and narrow window slits still showing the pockmarks and chips left by bullets and artillery fire during World War II.
It was later used by the GDR as a massive storage bin for imported Cuban fruits and vegetables set aside for the consumption of the government elite. After the Berlin Wall fell, the fortress-like bunker became an enormous, and extremely hard-core, techno-fetish club, which is how Matthias Balz discovered it (and a lasting appreciation for the erotic possibilities of neoprene).
It wasn't until the early 2000s, after the club had died, that Balz bought the empty bunker and renovated it at a cost of millions to expose his fabulous art collection, by appointment only, to select members of the public.
But he isn't the only one who has bought up neglected architectural relics of the Third Reich and dumped enormous amounts of money into them for renovation. The entire city block is under construction. Huge cranes loom all around the bunker and the neighboring buildings. Those elevated blue water pipes are everywhere.
Maria drives up and easily finds a parking spot behind a tiny yellow Smart Fortwo, which looks like a car made for Smurfs.
She turns to Erich in the backseat. "Stay in the car with the doors locked, no matter what happens. If there's trouble, call the police on your cell phone."
Erich nods, a big grin on his face. Life has become a lot more exciting since McGrave showed up.
Maria and McGrave get out of the car and cross the empty street towards the bunker. It's a stark, cold, imposing structure, designed to convey the invincibility of the Third Reich.
The street is empty.
No traffic.
No people.
No sound.
It's about as lifeless as a movie studio back lot.
"Face it, McGrave," Maria says. "You're wrong."
Stefan and his team are in position at the construction site around the edge of the pit, their weapons aimed into it, waiting for the robbers to emerge from the tunnels below.
There's no way Richter and the robbers can escape. They are surrounded from above and there's another assault team coming up behind them in the tunnel from the auction house.
It's basically over. The robbers just don't know it yet.
So for Torsten, Heinrich, Stefan, and all the other cops involved, it's anticlimactic.
Everyone's attention is on the pit. No one is paying any attention to the van that the robbers arrived in.
And why should they?
Nobody is inside it.
They looked.
But they didn't look underneath it.
If they did, they would have seen the bomb.
####
The van explodes, obliterating the water pipe above it.
####
From where Maria and McGrave are standing, they can feel the rumble from the blast and see the flash in the night sky several blocks away.
"It's showtime," McGrave says.
####
The force of the explosion and the blast of water from the severed pipe sweep the assault team off their feet, hurling several of them into the pit.
####
Bombs explode under key portions of the elevated water pipes throughout Mitte, one after the other, releasing torrents of water onto the streets, mowing over people, and snarling traffic.
####
Maria and McGrave can hear the pandemonium: the honking horns, the sirens, and the countless alarms set off by the percussion of the blast. Water rolls down the street towards them. They look at each other, then at the bunker, just as its alarm goes off.
"Okay, you were right, I was wrong." She takes out her cell phone.
"What are you doing?"
"Calling for backup."
"They'll never get here in time," he says. "The streets are going to be gridlocked."
"Then how is Richter going to get away?"
McGrave looks up. So does she, just in time to see Richter atop the bunker, wearing a backpack. He leaps onto a line dangling from a construction crane and swings to the next rooftop.
Spider-Man, eat your heart out.
"Not again," McGrave says, and looks at the Smart Fortwo parked beside him.
The Smart Fortwo is the midget offspring of a drunken, corporate one-night stand between Swatch, maker of rubber watches, and Mercedes-Benz, maker of fine automobiles. Swatch ran off in the morning and left Mercedes to raise the Fortwo, which measures a mere eight feet long and five feet wide, about the same as a typical golf cart. The Fortwo is propelled by a three-cylinder, seventy-one-horsepower, rear-mounted engine that is about as powerful as a decent outboard motor or the combined force of twenty-three elderly women in their motorized chairs.
McGrave takes a step back, lifts his right leg, and sticks his foot through the driver's-side window of the car, smashing out the glass. He opens the door, sweeps away the glass from the seat with his jacket, and squeezes inside.
####
Maria takes out her gun and shoots at Richter, who eludes her, fleeing across the rooftops using his amazing parkour skills.
McGrave yanks some wires from under the dash, starts the car, and pulls out of the parking space, nearly hitting Maria.
"What are you doing?" she says.
"Giving chase," he says. "Are you coming or not?"
She points to Erich. "Stay here."
Maria hops in the car and McGrave speeds off.
McGrave races their car down the empty street, peering up at the buildings as he steers to follow Richter's progress jumping from rooftop to rooftop.
"I'll watch," Maria says. "You drive."
McGrave heads onto a busy boulevard, which is full of water and clogged with cars, so he drives up onto the sidewalk, forcing people to leap out of his way and slip on the slick concrete.
"Where is he?"
"Keep going straight," she says. "Where did you learn how to steal a car?"
"My university," he says. "Didn't they teach you how in yours?"
"Left!" she says.
McGrave makes a sharp turn at the next street, but this one isn't just gridlocked with cars. The sidewalks are also gone, removed to make room for the blue pipes, which are now spewing water.
There's nowhere for him to drive.
He looks up at the rooftops. He is losing sight of Richter in the distance.
"We're not going to catch him like this," McGrave says. "He's going somewhere. But where? If you couldn't use the streets, how would you escape?"
Maria thinks a moment. "The Spree-Kanal. That's where he's heading. It feeds into the river. If he's got a boat, he can disappear in minutes."
"Which way is it?"
"West," she says.
McGrave turns the wheel to his right and floors it, driving through the glass doors of an office building.
"I didn't mean that literally," Maria says.
"We don't have a lot of choices," he says.
McGrave drives the tiny car across the lobby, past the elevators, and through the glass doors on the other side.
The car bursts onto the next block, but the street is also clogged with traffic, so he makes a hard left onto the sidewalk, driving until he spots a narrow opening between cars.