Berlin Is Never Berlin by Marko Kloos

Author:Marko Kloos [Kloos, Marko]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

The tracking map on the laptop looked like a bigger version of the one on Melissa’s phone. Eli logged in, toggled a few settings, and turned the laptop so Khan could see the screen.

“There’s her phone,” he said. “Same place. And there’s her watch. It’s gray too. If it was turned on right now, it’d be blue.”

The dot that marked the position of Natalie’s watch was right in front of a large square building labeled as Flakturm.

“What the fuck is a Flakturm,” Khan asked. Eli took the question as a directive and did a search, then scrolled through the results.

“Whoa. It’s a thing left over from the war. Big concrete tower, for air defense.”

“You mean like a bunker?”

“Look.” Eli brought up an image. The structure looked square and brutal. The concrete was stained and dirty from decades of weather exposure. There were no windows or other external reference points, but judging by the height of the trees lining the pathways around the building, he guessed the concrete monstrosity was at least six floors high.

“Does it say what’s in that thing?”

Eli closed the picture and scrolled through a few more pages.

“It says there’s a museum inside now. Some artist commune. And a nightclub. Looks pretty cool, actually.”

Something tickled Khan’s tiger instincts, and he felt the hair on his neck bristle. Over by one of the windows, there was a soft scraping noise. Khan looked up and saw a hint of movement in the corner of the window, like a fluttering drape. Then it was gone. He heard another sound, the faintest ticking of something hard on metal, this one from above. Their suite was on the top floor, and there was nothing above them but the roof.

Khan got up and walked over to the window. The windows in their suite stretched from floor to ceiling and opened onto a narrow balcony that ran the width of the suite. He made a shushing gesture at Melissa and the boys. Then he opened one of the windows and stepped out onto the balcony. The night air was pleasantly cool and carried thousands of city smells with it. In front of the hotel, on the other side of Pariser Platz, the columns of the Brandenburg Gate glowed in the darkness, illuminated by dozens of spotlight fixtures.

Khan turned to look up at the edge of the roof and sniffed the air again. There was a presence up there, something bigger than an enterprising raccoon. Something was up there in the darkness, quietly breathing.

The part of the roof above the top floor was a sloping face of green-tinged copper sheeting, topped by a rail. The rail was just at the limit of Khan’s vertical leaping range. He flexed his leg muscles a few times and extended his claws. The copper roof slope was almost too smooth for him to get traction, but he managed to get a hand on the rail at the top. He hauled himself up and dropped onto the roof.

The rooftop was flat and lined with rubberized material.

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