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REVENGE OF ODESSA Frederick Forsyth with Tony
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REVENGE OF ODESSA
Prologue
Washington DC
United States of America
23 May 2025 Friday
Senator Jack Johnson admired his new, tailor-made tuxedo in the mirror. It fitted perfectly, and so it should: it had cost more than his first car. But the price was worth it. It was a special suit for a special night. A night that marked a new chapter in his life.
At least that was the plan. But like many plans, it would come to nothing. Because unknown to Johnson, this was the suit in which he would die.
Johnson had never considered himself an important man. Others did. The personal protective detail downing a hurried meal in his basement kitchen proved that. But the idea that his work somehow made him ‘special’? Johnson had never bought into it.
He had of course expected some media intrusion when first elected in 2020. But he had not anticipated their interest in what he thought was his very ordinary private life, or how tragedy would take that interest and intensify it to a laser focus.
His wife, Rita, had fallen ill and died quickly early in his term, transforming him from one half of Washington DC’s
feted new glamour couple to its most frequently consoled widower. It was the darkest journey of his life, with every detail drunk down by a press corps thirsty for news.
Johnson did not hold it against them – it was the life he had chosen – but he was grateful when the attention finally lessened. It left him with what, in this town, passed for normality.
A normality he expected to end tonight.
He had met Elizabeth three months ago and they had spent precious little time together since then, but there was no doubting how he felt. Only one other person had ever had the same effect on him. After almost four years alone, Johnson was ready.
And so were DC’s professional people-watchers.
There was no way to keep the press out. Not once they’d caught the scent of a new relationship. The smell of a headline. But he had learned a lot in his first term of office. A far better understanding of how the whole machine worked. What he could not stop, he could at least manipulate.
The press would meet Elizabeth. They would get their story.
But they would do so on his terms.
The thought made him smile as his fingers configured his black bow tie, the act almost subconscious. He had chosen tonight carefully. The nature of the event – a major fundraiser for the Smithsonian – guaranteed maximum press coverage and ensured that the evening would serve as a one-and-done ‘coming out’ for them as a couple. That Elizabeth was the evening’s keynote speaker only improved the choice, making her instantly recognizable to every reporter there.
The sound of a slammed door broke into Johnson’s thoughts. It had come from several floors below. He stepped out of his en suite dressing room and into the bedroom.
The room was empty, the king-size bed immaculately made
up and untouched, just as the maid had left it hours earlier. The whole room, like the rest of Johnson’s oversized Mount Pleasant townhouse, was more like a show home than a residence.
He moved back to the dressing room and moments later heard another door close. Not a slam this time. He chose to ignore it. He was used to having strangers in his home: his senatorial staff; the three-person domestic team who took care of the place between them; and the small group of Capitol Hill police whose job it was to keep him safe. He was rarely, if ever, alone here.
His smile returned as he considered the evening ahead.
But it disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived, chased away by the sound of another closing door. Much quieter this time. Much closer.
In two strides he was back in the bedroom. It was no longer empty.
‘Sophie?’
He spoke as soon as he recognized the figure now standing in front of him, before he had registered the details. They quickly followed, along with a sinking feeling in Johnson’s gut.
Sophie Arnott was a high-school kid from Ohio. By far the outstanding student in her school district, she had won a work placement as an unpaid intern in the office of her state’s junior senator: Jack Johnson. She was five weeks into a six-week appointment, over the course of which she had demonstrated four things very well. She was extremely intelligent. She was intellectually mature beyond her years. And she was incredibly personable: in little more than a month she had made close friends among a senatorial staff that was usually prickly as hell.
All three of those traits were positive and stood Sophie in good stead for the political career she wanted. But the fourth thing? Her barely concealed and completely inappropriate
sexual attraction to her much older boss – that was a problem. A problem that now threatened to become a scandal: an underage teenage intern standing in a US senator’s bedroom dressed in a long, buttoned-up raincoat and with the door pulled shut behind her.
The romantic interest had been evident as early as her second week. Even Johnson, notorious for his inability to pick up on ‘signals’, had been unable to ignore it. He had chosen to overlook the crush, loath to allow a youthful infatuation to end her internship under a cloud. But still he had been careful. In those five weeks he had made sure to never be alone in any room with Sophie Arnott.
Until now.
His heart began to race as Sophie’s lips broke into a coy smile, the increased activity not brought on by arousal. Instead it was a mix of nerves and of the adrenalin now flooding his system: the very real sensation of a cold chill descending his spine was impossible to ignore. His hand slipped instinctively to his pocket, searching for his cellphone as he wondered who he could call for help. That thought lasted barely a moment, ended by the mental image of the handset in the living room three floors below. He had left it on charge.
Still hoping he was reading this wrong, Johnson took an instant to assess the details. It did nothing to quell his fears. Sophie’s face was made up how an adolescent would consider suited to adult seduction: deep red lips, too much blusher across her cheeks, eyelashes bordering on the hieroglyphic. Her thick brown hair, apparently styled by a professional, was cascading down her back.
And her clothing? What was beneath that raincoat? It was a question Johnson hoped never to have answered. Barely a second had passed since he had first said her name.
It was enough time for him to be sure of what was happening, but still his next words were a question.
‘Sophie, what are you doing here?’
The nervous smile. The hand raised to her hip, every inch of the movement betrayed by hesitation.
‘You know why I’m here . . . Jack.’
Johnson’s Christian name sounded wrong coming from her, and it was made worse by her husky tone. She must have played this moment out countless times in her mind. A child’s fantasy of sex. One far more dangerous than she could possibly know.
Johnson was beginning to panic.
‘How did you get in here?’
‘I just walked right in. I wanted to see you. Away from the office. And I wanted you to see me.’
Johnson thought of his protection detail. Of course they’d let her in: she was a staffer. But what if one of them had noticed how she was made up? What would they think was going on behind the closed bedroom door?
‘So do you want to see me?’
Sophie’s trembling fingers popped the top button on her raincoat as she spoke. Then the next. Now she had Johnson’s full attention. But not in the way she had planned.
‘Stop that.’
He snapped out the order as he closed the distance between them. He could already see bare skin beneath the raincoat, a glimpse of lace that suggested lingerie. He grasped Sophie’s hands before she could reveal any more.
‘You can’t, Sophie. This is wrong.’
She pulled her hands away and stepped back, and Johnson let her move free. The last thing this needed to become was an assault charge. He could see the confusion on her face. The innocence behind the intention.
‘But . . . I thought . . .’
‘You thought wrong.’
‘I thought we both wanted this.’
‘For God’s sake, Sophie. You’re a child. You don’t know what you want, not yet. But it sure as hell isn’t me.’
She moved closer, her hands now reaching out for Johnson’s.
‘But it is you, Jack. It always has been. And I know you want me. I’ve seen the way you look at me.’
It was Johnson’s turn to pull away. To put some distance between them. When he spoke he kept his tone firm. Deliberately paternal.
‘Whatever it is you think you’ve seen, you’re wrong. I’m sorry. I’m forty-two years old, Sophie. I’m old enough to be your father.’
‘But you’re not . . .’
The smile had returned as she began to move closer.
‘That’s enough.’ This time Johnson’s tone was firm. ‘I want you out of this house.’
Sophie opened her mouth to respond. The senator did not allow it. He grabbed her by the shoulders and began to forcibly march her towards the bedroom door.
‘Not another word, Sophie. This is over.’
They reached the closed exit in just a few steps. Keeping one hand on Sophie’s shoulder to prevent her from turning back, Johnson used the other to turn the door’s handle. Nothing happened. The door was locked and his personal key was nowhere to be seen.
He spun Sophie around so she faced him, his patience gone.
‘Where’s the damned key?’
‘I . . . I didn’t lock it.’
Johnson did not believe her. There were three keys to this room. One with housekeeping. One with security. And the
third: that was Johnson’s. And when he was in this room, it was always in the lock.
If it wasn’t there now, then someone had taken it.
‘No more games.’ His tone was stern. No-nonsense. ‘Unlock the door.’
‘I can’t. I didn’t lock it.’
For a moment Johnson felt the urge to shout, but as he prepared to raise his voice he noticed something in Sophie’s eyes. She was telling the truth. The realization begged two inevitable questions:
If she didn’t lock it, then who the hell did? And why?
The mystery was forgotten barely an instant later, overridden by a noxious taste in his mouth and an unpleasant, alien sensation in his throat and lungs. Turning in confusion, Johnson noticed the first wisps of black smoke seeping through the fine gap between the locked door and the bedroom carpet.
His heart rate spiked as he drew the only conclusion he could.
‘FIRE!’
His shout made Sophie physically jump, but he paid her no attention. He was already at the door, determined now that he would open it. First he tried the handle again – a waste of a moment – and then he tried his shoulder. Four. Five. Six times he smashed his deltoid against the thick wooden barrier.
He ignored the pain that grew with each collision.
And the door ignored his impact.
He stepped back, breathing hard from the exertion and the toxic mix that now formed the air around him. It only now occurred to him that the door, like every other access point to the room, was almost certainly reinforced. An unintended downside of the security overhaul the house had gone through before he and Rita had moved in.
The smoke was increasing fast, at a rate Johnson could
hardly believe. What had been the finest of wisps was becoming a torrent. The smell burned his nose and sickened his lungs.
‘HELP!’ Johnson screamed as he stepped back and took aim at the door, hoping his foot could achieve what his shoulder could not. ‘HELP!’
‘HELP!’
Sophie’s shout drowned out the dead sound of Johnson’s shoe hitting the door.
He tried again.
The door – its reinforcement now a certainty – did not even shudder.
Johnson stepped away, struggling to suppress the vomit he could feel in his throat. The smoke was growing thicker by the second. Moments more and the doorway was completely obscured.
‘HELP!’
The shouts were coming from them both. Loud, but increasingly hopeless.
No one was coming. Johnson had already asked himself why. It was a big house, but not so big that this level of noise would not be heard. His conclusion was the obvious one: his protection detail was unable to get through the flames.
‘HELP. PLEASE, HELP US.’
Johnson was struck by the weakness of Sophie’s voice as she cried for help one last time. The smoke was everywhere, filling the bedroom and the en suite dressing room. It had taken its toll on him already, but he now realized how much worse it had hit the teenager’s lungs. He glanced down at her, her skin pale and what had been the contents of her stomach now decorating the front of her raincoat.
The girl was dying. They both were. Unless Johnson could find the strength to save them.
Scooping Sophie up into his arms, he struggled to the far end of the dressing room and placed her in the corner on the floor. The blanket of smoke was less severe down there.
Staying low, his eyes fell on the pair of heavy wooden shoe trees discarded on the floor. He crawled to them and picked them up, then slowly moved back into the bedroom. Towards the single window that looked down into the property’s garden.
The window had been sealed since Johnson’s election. Too easy an access point for anyone with bad intentions, he had been told. And so he had followed his security detail’s advice and had the glass reinforced and the frame fixed so it could not be opened. It had seemed sensible at the time.
He tried to climb to his feet, but at first his body refused his instruction. The vomit he had been holding in now broke free, across his hands and the wooden tools he was holding, and for a moment he felt his left elbow give way, almost planting him face first on the carpet beneath him.
Johnson resisted the urge to collapse. He knew how that would end: once down he would never rise. Instead he summoned every last drop of energy and forced himself back to his feet. Barely able to stay standing and choking on the poison that surrounded him, he took the first shoe tree in his right hand and slammed it into the glass with what little strength he had left. It did not leave even a smudge. He did it again. And again. And again. Repeated blows, each weaker than the last as he sucked the smoke into his lungs.
On the fourth hit the shoe tree broke apart in his hands. He looked down at the second, still in his left hand but now barely visible. And in that moment he realized the futility of his efforts.
He let it drop to the floor.
Then he joined it.
And as he drifted away he thought of Rita. He thought of Elizabeth. And he thought of Sophie Arnott, the child who would share his fate.
One Stuttgart Federal Republic of Germany
27 September 2025 Saturday
Karlweber leaped into the air before the ball had hit the back of the net, his frenzied cheers as indecipherable as the thousands that surrounded him. The entire Cannstatter Kurve had come alive at a moment of individual brilliance from VfB Stuttgart’s iconic number 10 Bobby Wright, his forty-metre run ending with a rocket of a shot from the corner of the penalty area.
The wonder goal had put the result beyond doubt. VfB were 4–0 ahead with only fifteen minutes to go, making a comeback near impossible for TSG Hoffenheim. It was the kind of scoreline that demanded celebration, especially when it was achieved against one of the club’s biggest rivals. And Weber – like so many around him – was going to do exactly that.
He wiped what seemed like a bucketful of beer from his eyes and through his hair as he continued to cheer through the ongoing shower of lager, grabbing and hugging and mostly screaming at those closest to him. He was not the only one. Wright’s strike had set off an explosion of uncontrolled euphoria in VfB’s most infamous stand, filled with the club’s most
fanatical fans. Anywhere else and Weber’s reaction might have seemed over the top. Here he was a single drop in an ocean of manic excitement.
No attention was paid to the pitch as the madness engulfed the stand. No one watched as the ball was retrieved from the goal or reset in the centre circle, ready for the final stretch of the match to begin. Instead the cheering continued as minutes passed, with fans congratulating one another as if they had scored the four goals themselves.
This was why the Cannstatter Kurve fans were the very last to see death’s arrival at the MHP Arena.
Weber barely registered the first of the gunshots. They came when his head was buried deep into the shoulder of his much taller friend, Philipp Rüdiger. Weber and Rüdiger had been coming to VfB together – along with their pal Florian Aber –for close to thirty years. None of the three men noticed the sudden change in atmosphere.
The second shots came seconds later. This time Weber noticed the noise, but his mind was still too distracted to even wonder what the cause might be. That changed in a moment with a third, fourth and fifth burst, these almost simultaneous.
Weber looked around in confusion. His first thought was firecrackers, but something inside him was saying ‘no’. Perhaps it was the volume. Too loud for stadium fireworks. Or perhaps it was the inherent violence that seemed to accompany the sound. Whatever it was, his instinct was proved correct by the sound of a sixth, seventh and eighth burst and the realization that what he had thought were cheers of joy had become screams of terror.
He turned towards Aber to his right, intending to shout an instruction. His friend beat him to it.
‘RUN!!’
Aber pushed Weber forward as he screamed, his words drowned out by the noise around them and then eclipsed completely by another round of shots, this one much closer. The entire Cannstatter Kurve had registered the threat and a whole section of the stand seemed to move as one, sweeping a terrified Weber, Aber and Rüdiger in its wake.
The shots continued to ring out as the three men moved. Some sounded distant. Some sounded close. Wherever they were coming from, Weber had no way to see them and no way to control if he was moving towards or away from them. It was all he could do to stay upright in the crushing embrace of the crowd, his breathing strained as bodies pressed in from all sides.
Weber tried to struggle free. He was desperate for a better view of where the human wave was taking him and concerned to catch a glimpse of his two friends, now lost to him somewhere in the throng. It was an impossible task. Thousands of people had merged into a single, irresistible and mindless entity that was driven by just one thing: the urge to escape.
Against that, one man could do nothing.
More shots. More screams.
The crowd seemed to tighten in response. As if those on the outside were trying to fight their way in. It worsened the already unbearable constriction, with bodies on all sides pushing deep into Weber’s chest, shoulders and back. In that moment it was impossible to breathe at all: his lungs and his rib cage could do nothing to overcome the pressure that now surrounded him.
He fought for breath. For space. But he knew that he was failing. That he could not survive this.
Relief came with another round of fire. The sound alone told Weber that these were the closest yet. A mix of blood and
other bodily matter confirmed that instinct, hitting his face as it was expelled from some unseen victim.
The proximity of the gunman somehow dispersed a portion of the crowd, as if they had decided to take their chances in another direction. It eased the pressure on Weber, allowing him to breathe for what felt like the first time in minutes. It also cleared a line of sight.
For the first time he could see a gunman.
He registered the features in the blink of an eye. The man was Arabic. He was dressed in a brown, military-style one-piece that resembled a flight suit. And he was carrying an assault rifle, which in that moment he turned away from Weber’s direction and towards a small group that had broken from the crowd.
A group, Weber now saw, that included several small boys.
‘NO!!’
His scream did nothing, leaving Weber to watch in horror as the gunman opened fire, the multi-round burst accompanied by a shout of his own:
‘ALLAHU AKBAR!’
It was the worst sight of Weber’s life. The most horrific act he had ever witnessed. It left him physically stunned. Unable to move, he watched as the same gunman fired two more bursts into the fleeing crowds, both times with the same celebratory shout to his god. The same paralysis remained even as the man noticed him, and so Weber remained frozen as the gun was turned towards him.
Had the man had a chance to shoot, Weber would be dead. And yet he felt no relief when, instead of opening fire, the gunman was riddled with bullets from an unseen source, slamming him hard on to the ground.
Weber registered none of this. Not his own survival. Not
the death of the terrorists who had killed so many. Not even the fact that his nightmare was ending. Instead his eyes remained rooted on the bodies that were metres ahead of him.
The bodies of three VfB fans, no younger or older than he and his two friends had been when they’d attended their first game. Three boys who had no doubt been celebrating that same goal only minutes earlier.
Three boys who would never see another sunrise.
Two
‘
The inTense heaT of the Stuttgart night seems an apt backdrop for the hell wrought here today.’
Georg Miller read the words back to himself four times. Three in his head, then once aloud. They passed the silent examination – they were fine on paper – but they fell at the final hurdle.
You can write this shit, Georg, he told himself, but you sure as hell can’t say it.
Using his cheap black biro, he put a line through his own try-hard prose. Then he closed his battered leather notebook and stuffed it into his satchel case. The words weren’t coming, and nor would they. Not yet.
Not while he felt like this.
He looked outside, through the wide doors of the main hospital entrance. What he wanted most right now was a cigarette, but the sight of the smoking area made him hesitate. It was full to uncomfortable capacity with reporters, all with nothing to do but smoke and vape as they waited for an announcement from inside.
It was a lazy approach to the job, Georg always thought. Waiting for the bare bones of a story to be handed to them on a plate. But it was not just his disdain for his peers that was keeping Georg inside the building and away from the stilloppressive evening heat. It was also his certainty that a nicotine hit, as welcome as it might be, would do nothing to calm him. Not after the horrors he had seen tonight.
It’s going to take something a lot stronger and a lot less legal to touch the sides after this one.
He turned his gaze back towards the deeper interior of the hospital.
From here he could see the overcrowded reception area. Five per cent of that number were press, he estimated. The rest were patients and medics. Those numbers alone suggested a busy night, but the terrible reality was hidden from his view. What Georg had witnessed in the wards and corridors beyond reception was like nothing he had ever experienced. Not up close.
The images would be seared into his memory for as long as he lived. A high price that removed any need for him to look again in order to describe them.
And yet still he had no choice but to go back in. To go past reception and into the hell beyond. Because that was where the answers were. The answers to the questions he was burning to ask.
To the questions he was paid to ask.
Because a newsman doesn’t run at the first sight of blood.
He repeated the words in his mind as he pushed his back from the wall and took a deep breath, steeling himself for what was to come. Those same words, driven into him by his grandfather for longer than he could remember, had fuelled Georg his whole career: a mantra etched into his soul. By now he was unaware he was even thinking them. Unaware how much he owed to the ethos behind them. His grandfather’s ultimate lesson, the difference between him and everyone in that smoking area.
He headed back inside.
It had taken Georg almost two hours to travel from the Hamburg office of the Komet news magazine to Stuttgart
Airport, then thirty minutes more to reach the Marienhospital, where most of the wounded and the dying had been brought in a desperate effort to save their lives. By the time he arrived a clear three hours had passed, yet still the medics had not seen half of the wounded.
That was the scale of the horror that had brought him and so many other reporters here.
Even now the details remained sparse.
The police had said very little to the public or to the press, and Georg had been unable to get much sense from anyone inside the hospital. The medics were too busy, the victims mostly in no condition to talk, and the sight of so many dead and dying had left Georg too shaken to formulate any kind of insightful inquiry.
Three hours since the first word of the atrocity had reached him and still all he knew were the same scant details as had been shared with the rest of the world: over thirty football supporters dead and who knew how many more wounded, with all the gunmen themselves killed by GSG-9, the elite special forces unit of the Bundespolizei.
In the early days those facts would have been enough for Georg. At least at this stage of the story. But the world had changed in the decade since he had printed his first byline, and nowhere was that truer than in Germany. Back then he could have expected a moderate, logical reaction to even the worst terrorist outrage. Now he could guarantee the opposite. Germany was a tinderbox, primed to explode in a direction Georg found unthinkable. And his country’s politicians, once among the most liberal in the Western world, could no longer be relied upon to calm that storm.
An attack like this one, and like all of those that had preceded it, was an escalation in scale and horror great enough that its
manipulation and use against an already frightened population was inevitable.
He had watched it happen before. So-called respectable politicians using tragedy to rally the panicked masses to a cause those same masses would otherwise question. Again and again it had happened, across three heart-wrenching years of terror and violence and death.
But not this time. This time Georg would stop it.
To do that, he needed to know more.
Three
Hewalked slowly as he moved back inside, fearful of the sights about to greet him.
One of the largest hospitals in Stuttgart and boasting by far the city’s biggest emergency centre, the Marienhospital was still unfit for the purpose to which it was now being put.
Georg kept his eyes fixed straight ahead and tried to ignore what was happening around him, but it was impossible to miss the huge numbers of bloody and barely covered corpses left on abandoned trolleys in the hospital corridor, dumped there by staff too busy fighting for the living to worry about the dignity of the dead.
Thirty dead is an underestimate, he told himself as he moved ever forward. It’s way more than that.
And yet somehow those bodies were not the worst of it. Instead it was the sights and the sounds of the living that haunted him more. There were scores of them, left and right. Some were still awaiting medical attention. Others looked as if the medics had done all they could.
He could only shake his head in dismay as he moved onwards, fighting back tears of despair. This, he recognized, was the real-world result of pure evil: the massive blood loss, the agonized cries, and the desperation on the faces of doctors and nurses still battling to save these poor people.
Many of them wouldn’t make it. Georg needed no medical qualification to know that. And those who would survive? They
were dotted around the emergency centre and beyond, into the many surrounding departmental areas seconded to the task.
Georg didn’t know it, but he had been breathing deeply as he moved. A subconscious attempt to strengthen him for what was to come, itself a symptom of his determination to get through this. His determination to do his job. But those breaths stopped now as he glanced to his left, his attention caught by the nearest trolley and by the small, child-sized figure its sheet was covering.
For a moment he could not move. That last sight – that lost child – was almost too much. An innocent kid, probably excited about a day at the football with their papa, their joy replaced in an instant by a terror they could never understand. Their life ripped away from them by those . . . . . . by those murdering fucking bastards.
His thoughts almost overwhelmed him, his cheeks now wet with tears. With his gaze fixed on the thankfully unbloodied sheet, his emotions finally overtook him. The tears were few, but the inertia was total. He might have stood there all night, paralysed between grief and inaction, were it not for a contact he felt to his lower back. It physically forced him towards a wall, breaking through his stupor.
Three medics rushed past, the closest one offering a bare apology for the push as they moved from one emergency to the next. It was the interruption Georg needed, and a reminder of why he was here.
They’re pushing on , he thought as he watched the three doctors rush past. They’re doing their jobs.
They’re doing their duty.
It was the jolt to the system that Georg needed to do the same.
Taking a few steps past the trolley and putting the child-sized
bump out of view, he drew another deep breath and looked ahead, towards what seemed a less frantic version of the emergency centre.
Moving in, Georg quickly saw what this ward had become. The medical staff were putting the non-fatally injured here. A place for them to bleed and to moan and to cry out in pain, all while they waited for medical attention that was needed far more elsewhere. If he was going to find anyone willing and able to speak to him, it would be here.
He spotted them almost instantly. A group of three men, all seated against a far wall, each a generation older than Georg and bloodied enough to leave no doubt why they were here. All looked injured, but none of their injuries seemed life-threatening.
They noticed him in turn, as he headed towards them. It was inevitable, really: with the other reporters staying outside, Georg was probably the only person in the building who was not currently caked in blood. He figured they’d have recognized him for what he was already and so he got straight to the point.
‘Do you mind if I speak to you gentlemen? I’ve got a few questions.’
None of the three said a word. Instead they made a play of looking from one to the other, then at the packed ward around them. A message delivered in silence.
‘Were you . . .’ Georg hesitated for a moment, realizing that what he was about to ask was ridiculous. ‘Were you guys at the football stadium this evening?’
Two of the three stayed silent. The third, now rising to his feet, did not.
‘What the hell do you think?’ he asked.
‘Verständlich,’ Georg replied. ‘I guess I asked for that. Look, I’m not trying to pull any tricks here. I’m press, that’s all. I just want to find out what happened.’
One of the other men sat up a little at the mention of press. As if he had not guessed it already. The other two – one still seated, the other now standing – had worked it out for themselves.
The first guy remained the spokesman:
‘What’s your name?’
‘Georg Miller. I’m from the Komet in Hamburg. Do you mind if I ask yours?’
The standing man looked back towards his two friends, as if asking for permission. One replied with a nod, the other with a shrug. Answers as clear to him as they were meaningless to Georg.
‘I’m Karl Weber.’ He indicated behind him. ‘My tall friend, he is Philipp Rüdiger. And this is Florian Aber. Now tell us, what exactly is it that you want?’
‘The details. The truth. I want to ensure that what gets reported is what really happened.’
‘The truth?’ Weber looked as if he wanted to laugh, if he could only find it in himself after the horrors he had witnessed. ‘When did your type ever report the truth?’
‘What do you mean by “your type”?’
‘You know what I mean. All you do is print lies, broadcast lies. You’re no better than a propaganda unit for the bastards who let all this happen.’
‘Which bastards?’
Weber looked around himself, his exasperation theatrical. When he spoke again his voice was raised, catching the attention of the people around them.
‘Which bastards? Are you serious? The sonsofbitches who have taken this country into the dirt, that’s who. Who have filled our borders with enemies who hate us and our way of life . . . murdering, evil fucking scum of the fucking earth . . .
You and the people like you. You’re no different to Goebbels, but at least he was a patriot.’
Georg felt himself shudder at the final sentence, keenly aware of the crowd that was beginning to form around them. A crowd that did not seem inclined to disagree with Karl Weber. Those last words – the implied defence of Adolf Hitler’s chief propagandist – were a new one on him: a step further on a path he had watched his countrymen take with growing dismay. But the rest? The distaste and the distrust towards the mainstream press?
That was something all too familiar in 2025.
And the truth was, Georg could understand what had caused it.
‘For what it’s worth, I share your anger,’ he began. ‘Things like today, they are rarely reported with the accuracy they should be. But believe me, that’s why I’m here. I want to make sure the whole truth reaches the public. Not some politician’s spin.’
‘Really? And so where the hell were you every other damn time? Where were you after Magdeburg, when the government and the media tried to convince us that an Arab screaming “Allahu Akbar” as he drove a car into a crowd of Germans at a Christmas market was an anti-Islamist?’
‘I realize how that—’
‘And what about Bonn?’ It was the second man this time. Florian Aber. ‘A bomb literally inside a church. And how did you arseholes report it? “No reason to suggest a connection to Islamic extremism”, that’s how. If we didn’t have AfD and social media, you sonsofbitches would keep us in the dark for ever.’
‘I can see why it would seem that way.’ Georg was determined that he would make them understand. ‘But you have my word: that’s not what I’m going to do. It’s my job to shine a spotlight on the truth. To make sure that everyone knows what they need to know.’
‘And who decides what we need to know? You?’
‘No one decides. You should be told the truth. Nothing more or less than that.’
‘And that’s what you plan to do, is it? Tell the truth?’
‘If you’ll let me.’
‘ Der Scheinwerfer.’ This time the tall man spoke. Philipp Rüdiger. ‘That’s your podcast, no?’
Georg nodded in confirmation. He had no idea what direction the exchange was about to take.
‘The Spotlight, yes,’ he replied. ‘You’ve listened to it?’
‘I have.’
‘Then you know I mean what I say?’
‘You’re nobody’s shill, I’ll say that much.’
Weber didn’t seem to register the limited validation Rüdiger had given to the young reporter. He seemed too emotional to listen.
It left Georg no choice but to push on.
‘So can you tell me anything about today? Any details that need to be out there?
‘I can tell you who was behind it.’ Weber’s voice broke as he said the words. As if he were reliving a moment now burned into his being. ‘I can tell you who killed those little boys.’
Weber recounted what had happened, tears streaming down his face as he spoke. Georg waited a few seconds once he had finished, giving the man time to recover while taking care to form his next question.
He waited as long as he could, but he had no choice but to push for detail, for any sign this wasn’t what it seemed. But his witnesses were adamant. The attackers had been Islamist terrorists and they had gunned down children.
It was precisely what Georg had expected, leaving him nothing to say in reply.
‘Is that enough proof for you? Is it?’ Weber asked, his anger more evident than ever. ‘Or are we back at the Christmas market? Are you going to tell the world these murdering fuckers were just mentally ill? That all of them were just a bit sick in the head?’
‘Of course not. I promise you, if it’s as simple as you say, then that’s what I’ll report. But you need to understand, if it’s not that simple – if it turns out there’s more to it – then people need to know. And they need to know before some unscrupulous bastard uses this tragedy to cause trouble.’
‘Trouble?’
There was no mistaking the malice now in Weber’s tone. Georg immediately regretted his choice of words.
‘Trouble?’ Weber said again. ‘Have you taken a look around you? We’re way past fucking trouble.’
Georg opened his mouth to reply, but Aber pushed his friend aside and stepped up to Georg, poking his finger hard into his chest as he continued.
‘We don’t need you. We’ve got people who recognize that this – all of this – it’s a declaration of war on the German people. But this is a war we won’t lose. Not this time. Not with AfD behind us.’
Georg stepped back, putting himself out of reach. Aber’s aggression and that second reference to Alternative für Deutschland told him what he needed to know: there was nothing more to be gained from this exchange.
He took a second step back. Then a third. Distance meant safety, but still his eyes never left Florian Aber. Finally ready to turn, there was one more thing Georg felt he needed to say.
‘I will report whatever the truth turns out to be. I did mean that. No matter who it implicates.’
For all the response he got, he may as well have said nothing.
Four
Georg took a deep pull on his Lucky Strike cigarette and closed his eyes to savour the nicotine hit. It did little to cut through the stress caused by the past few minutes.
The bare emotions of the three men inside.
The anger in their voices.
The hatred.
He could not shake any of it.
Every part of their reaction was understandable to him. Karl Weber and his friends had survived an attack so horrific that even its aftermath had made Georg physically sick. If the fallout alone could hit him so hard, how horrific would it have been to actually live through it? To see it happen?
How could their reaction be anything but hate for those responsible?
What Aber had said, though? That went further. Deeper than just today.
‘This is a war we won’t lose,’ Aber had declared. ‘Not this time.’
That sentiment had worried Georg more than any terrorist attack. To him it represented something much bigger. A wholesale change in the direction of German society, one which threatened a battle for the soul of its people.
The Germany in which Georg had been raised was not the Germany of today. For half a century and more, the democratic remnant that had arisen from the Second World War had been the perfect partnership of liberal politics and society.
For some – for many, Georg now realized – that had been an ideological swing too far. A forced repositioning based on collective guilt. What had once been left or right and open to debate had become right or wrong, with all debate closed off.
It was a recipe for mass unrest, reminding Georg of what his grandfather had said for years: When you outlaw the truth, you pave the road to hell. Georg had initially rejected this wisdom. And he’d ignored his instincts.
Until the day that the message from both grew too loud. It was after Magdeburg in December 2024 that Georg began to listen.
A car-ramming attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market had left five dead and over three hundred injured.
Finding his journalistic integrity riled by the swift public statement that the Christmas tragedy was no more and no less than a mental health issue – an act of a man driven mad by his own inner demons – he began to ask questions. How could those mental health issues have been identified so quickly? How could other potential motives – some might say glaringly obvious motives – have been dismissed in almost an instant?
He understood the reasoning: ruling out a terrorist attack was intended to make a violent anti-Islamic reprisal less likely. But Georg also understood optics and could see how the response looked: it created the potential for a ‘them and us’ conflict, with the police being viewed as having taken sides. It was no surprise to him, then, when exactly that spin was placed upon it.
AfD and others like them seized the opportunity. They were willing to say what others were not. Willing to give voice to those thoughts long deemed unacceptable.
And by doing so, they were gaining support at a rate that made his grandfather’s warning truer every day: When you outlaw the truth, you pave the road to hell.
Five
Thethought depressed Georg enough that he felt the need to share it.
He was already metres beyond the smoking area, standing alone in the car park on to which it backed. He moved a little further away, out of earshot of other reporters and clear of the drifting vape clouds. Satisfied, he took out his smartphone and tapped the first name on his ‘favourites’ list.
Freya Fischer answered on the third ring.
‘How is it?’ she asked. ‘The footage we’re seeing, Georg. It looks horrible.’
‘It is horrible.’ He felt the tightness of his throat as he spoke; the question had brought too many unwelcome mental images rushing back. ‘It’s . . . I don’t know . . .’
Freya did not respond straightaway. When she did, her voice had changed. She sounded concerned.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Compared to the people inside? I’m the luckiest man alive.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I’ve got a job to do. This story needs to be told before it’s hijacked. Especially with what’s about to come out.’
‘What is it?’
‘The shooters were Middle Eastern. Or at least that’s what eyewitnesses I’ve spoken to said. They claim that they looked and spoke “Arabic”. Which suggests they were Islamic extremists.’ ‘Again?’
‘This time we have to get ahead of it. We can’t let this go the same way as Bonn.’
It was barely two months since Bonn had been the scene of the worst terrorist atrocity since reunification. The worst until tonight.
What had followed Bonn remained an open wound. Wild allegations and false identifications had been fuelled by social media, by the more extreme wings of the press and by ruthlessly populist politicians. The result was mass protests and misdirected violence. Mosques were targeted, Islamic businesses burned out and scores of innocent Muslim men injured, two of them fatally.
It was the closest thing Georg had ever seen to the images in his history books. A different religion and a different excuse, but the same unbridled hatred. All of it whipped up by men with bad intentions, men who wielded ignorance and lies as effectively as any weapon.
Georg was determined that he would not let that happen again. Too much damage had been done already, by those who wanted to take the Germany he loved and turn it into a country ruled by fear and anger.
‘What else have you got?’
Freya’s question broke through his thoughts.
‘What?’
‘I mean what else have you found out? Beyond the shooters’ ethnicity?’
‘Not a lot. Nothing meaningful, anyway.’
‘So no clue on motive?’
‘You mean beyond the usual?’
‘But isn’t that what you’re looking for? An explanation other than religion?’
‘What other explanation can there be? It’s clear what
happened here. My job now is to identify the minority of extremists who actually did this. Instead of seeing a whole community take the blame like they did last time.’
Freya waited a beat before she answered. Georg knew why. She was a professional, like him. And she was older than he was. More experienced. She knew to think things through before she jumped.
‘But why would they do this again?’ she finally asked. ‘After what happened last time? They can’t think this helps them.’
‘I agree it makes no sense at first. But maybe that’s what they want.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, what if they want to cause trouble for the majority? By stoking conflict? Maybe this whole thing is a way to build support through division.’
‘You need to find out who these guys were. You need their identities. And before anyone innocent gets strung up.’
‘I know.’
‘You have any leads on that?’
‘The night is young.’
‘So, nothing.’
Georg moved the phone away from his mouth as he took another pull on his cigarette. He was careful that Freya wouldn’t hear the telltale sounds of the burn and the inhale; they had made a pact to quit together the previous New Year and Georg had been hiding his failure for months.
He unconsciously turned his body as he exhaled, as if Freya could somehow see him through the phone. The movement left him facing the smoking area, which had emptied a little since he had exited the hospital. Only seven people were now dotted around it. One in particular caught his eye: an elderly man, older than anyone else there and wearing an inpatient’s
gown. He had no cigarette or vape and his stare was fixed on Georg.
Georg focused his eyes, accustoming them to the lamp that was shining behind the old man’s head. As his view became clearer he registered the watching man’s expression. It was unusual: a mixture of recognition and something close to horror. Or at least that was how Georg read it. He found the reaction confusing and for a moment considered calling out to him, until he was interrupted by the sound of Freya’s now distant voice.
‘Are you still there?’
Georg shook off the distraction and returned the handset to his ear.
‘I’m here.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ He glanced again at the old man’s unblinking gaze. Then he turned his back. ‘It’s fine.’
‘What can I do?’ Freya asked. ‘To help, I mean?’
‘Honestly, nothing. You’ve got your own work to do.’
‘Are you serious? This is the only story right now. I’ll be working on it anyway, so I may as well do it with you.’
‘The boss might not agree with that.’
‘She can’t agree or disagree if she doesn’t know. As far as she’s concerned, I’m chasing my own leads. No reason they can’t be your leads, too.’
‘As long as it doesn’t get you in trouble.’
‘What’s the matter, you worried you’ll have to become the sole breadwinner if I get fired?’
‘Something like that, yeah.’ Georg felt himself almost smile as he spoke. It lasted less than a moment. ‘OK. See if you can use any of your contacts in police intelligence to get a head start on the names of the shooters.’
‘No one’s going to be offering that up, Georg. Not this soon.’
‘I know that, but they might still give you a lead. Even if they don’t mean to. And once that line of communication is open, we can use it to check any rumours that start to spread.’
‘Chances are they don’t know anything yet. The gunmen won’t have gone into the stadium carrying ID.’
‘You don’t know that for sure. It’s worth checking.’
Freya said nothing. This time for a different reason. She didn’t agree with him. Georg could always tell.
‘I know you’re right,’ he conceded. ‘They almost certainly won’t know the names until they release the photographs and someone identifies them. But right now we don’t have anything else.’
Georg dropped his cigarette and ground it out beneath his foot. As he did, he took another glance towards the hospital entrance. The old man was still there. Still staring, the same strange look still on his face. He had not moved an inch.
The recognition was at least explicable. Georg’s podcast was successful enough that he had a low level of semi-celebrity, even if this particular patient was not the typical generation for a podcasting fan. But it was not the recognition that was bothering Georg.
It was the man’s expression.
The look of horror.
‘OK, then. For all the good it will do, I’ll tap up my sources.’ Again, the sound of Freya’s voice broke his distraction. ‘But I’m only doing it because I love you. I still think you’re wrong.’
‘I thought you were never going to say that at work?’
‘What, that you’re wrong? I say that all the time.’
‘I don’t believe you anyway.’
‘You don’t believe what?’
‘That you’re doing it out of love.’
‘Oh, really? Then why?’
‘You’re doing it so you can prove me wrong.’
‘Can’t it be a bit of both?’
Georg smiled again.
‘I guess so. I love you too.’
‘Stick to the rules, Miller. I know you’re at work.’
‘Yeah, but nobody here knows who I am.’
Georg glanced again towards the old man, immediately doubting his own words.
‘OK, I need to head back inside.’
‘Of course. Take care of yourself. For me.’
‘Always.’
He hit disconnect without another word, his full attention immediately on the old man. It crossed Georg’s mind for the first time that perhaps the patient had seen or heard something inside – maybe the reason for his fearful expression – and that perhaps he had information.
Georg began to walk towards him, raising his hand in acknowledgement for the old man to know his friendly intentions. The message did not seem to land: Georg had taken barely four steps before the elderly patient, his terrified eyes now wide, turned on his heel and rushed back inside the building.
Six
Theold man moved at a pace that, to his aged body, must have seemed like a sprint. Not fast enough that he could lose Georg in his wake – not even close to that – but it still forced the younger man to work in order to keep up.
The first metres of the pursuit were familiar. The same places Georg had wandered through with his eyes averted from the bodies and the blood that surrounded him. Two sharp left turns later and those same corridors and waiting areas were behind him, replaced with near-identical hallways that were mercifully free of covered corpses and the walking wounded.
Georg kept pace as the old man began to slow, his tired limbs failing him.
One more turn – a right this time, into an empty corridor not much longer than it was wide – and he came to a halt. Georg did the same, keeping his distance.
He took a step back. Then another. As far as the short corridor would allow. He hoped that some space would keep the patient calm, but the old man was shaking and breathing hard. He turned to face Georg, their eyes locking, and within moments the confusion on the older man’s face was replaced with a look of unmistakable recognition.
‘It can’t be.’
His voice was trembling but still deep and strong. He moved closer, his gaze studying Georg’s features.
‘It can’t be.’
Georg watched silently as the old man’s eyes scanned him from head to toe, then back up again. The fear that had been there moments before was gone. In its place?
Questions.
‘But you’re dead,’ he said, as much to himself as to Georg. ‘You’re dead.’
Georg began to shake his head, now sure that he had misjudged the situation.
This man isn’t a source, he told himself. The poor guy is sick. How had he not seen this from the start? Even from that distance? The expression on the man’s face alone, how had Georg not read that correctly, when it now seemed so obvious? Surely he was better than that?
‘Smaller,’ the old man said. He now seemed lost in his own mind, his words spoken to no one and making even less sense than before. ‘So much smaller than before. No. No, it can’t be you.’
Frustrated, Georg was about to turn and leave the man to his delusions, but something stopped him.
He hesitated for just a moment.
‘Who is it you think I am?’
Georg kept his voice low and gentle. As friendly as he could manage without sounding like he was addressing a child. The old man did not reply. Instead he kept looking at Georg’s face, taking in the details.
‘Who am I?’
This time the words registered. The old man stepped back; the confused expression returned. For a moment he simply stared, as if the question made no sense to him.
‘Who am I?’ Georg asked again.
The old man’s eyes narrowed.
‘You know who you are.’ There was an irritated tone to his
voice that had not been there before, his words spoken with almost a hiss.
The old man straightened his hunched back and brought himself to his tallest possible height. For the first time Georg could see that he had once been a big man. His shoulders still hinted at the width of youth, and even now, stood upright, he was several inches taller than Georg’s own five feet ten inches.
The aged face had changed, too. The fear was gone. So was the confusion. What was left was surprising: a mix of arrogance and defiance.
Maintaining his new, more powerful posture, the old man raised his jaw and spoke with a voice far stronger than he had used up to now.
‘You know who you are, Horst Miller. And you know who I am. Now let us not play games. If you have come for me, let us face it like men.’
Georg felt a chill descend his spine as the name registered in his mind. It was as shocking as a sudden blow to the gut; so much so that nothing said after the name meant a thing to him. Instead, his focus on those two words was absolute. They were the last two words he’d expected.
Because the old man was wrong.
Georg was not Horst Miller.
But he was Horst Miller’s son.