The rain had not yet fallen, but the air hung heavy and damp over Rügen. In the distance, thunder grumbled, a storm that could not decide. In the garden of Marit’s small house, the leaves of the raspberry bushes shivered. On the gravel path stood three figures, speaking in hushed tones.
Konrad Vohwinkel, in a blue windbreaker, kept glancing toward the terrace door. “So no trace? No message? Nothing at all?”
Marit shook her head. “I’ve searched everywhere. The cemetery, the fields, the little clearing behind the house. Nothing. Only… the pillow from the garden lounger was damp, as if she had been there during the night.”
“And you’re sure you slept? So deeply that you heard nothing?” Katja pulled her jacket tighter around her.
Marit looked wounded. “I’m telling you, I had a headache. That was no normal sleep. I… I had some wine, yes, but that doesn’t explain it.”
Sven stood a few steps away on the phone, nodding occasionally. When he came back, his face was grave. “There’ll be no official action. Not within forty-eight hours, no sign of a crime, no reason. Sina is a free woman. She can go wherever she pleases.”
“But she’ll die if we don’t find her!” Marit’s voice broke loud in the garden air.
Konrad laid a hand on her arm. “Then we look ourselves. Which car?”
“Ours.” Katja unlocked the BMW without a sound. Sven slid into the passenger seat, his stiff left leg stretched out. Marit and Konrad took the back. The car purred softly as it left the gravel path for the road.
“Garz first?” Katja asked.
“Yes. Maybe she remembered something. Maybe she’s there…” Marit stared out of the window.
The car glided almost noiselessly over narrow country roads, between swaying grain fields and solitary birches that no longer stirred in the sultry air. Sven said nothing, but his eyes scanned the landscape as though Sina might appear between the trees. Konrad leaned forward as far as the seatbelt allowed, as if he needed to be closer to Marit.
She sweated despite the air conditioning, wiped her brow, and looked out past old farmhouses, hay sheds, and weathered gravestones behind low fieldstone walls.
“Nothing,” she whispered. “Absolutely nothing.”
Katja gave no reply. Her hands gripped the wheel, steady. Only the rearview mirror betrayed how much she noticed: Konrad’s hand brushing against Marit’s, then covering it. Marit did not quite pull away. In her tired, worried face flickered a moment of warmth. A long, quiet finally.
Katja turned her eyes back to the road. That moment was not hers.
“I don’t understand why they won’t take this more seriously,” Konrad said.
Sven gave a dry laugh. “Because it sounds too incredible. A woman with memories of 1489, vanished after a barbecue with historical documents.”
“Still…” Konrad began, but Marit cut him off.
“I don’t believe she’s lost. Not really. She belongs in this world, but not as we do. She carries another way of living inside her. Back then, people knew how to survive rain, hunger, fear. If she were healthy, we’d still have time. But like this…”
The market square of Garz lay deserted. A few tourists drifted among half-timbered houses and old lindens. Nowhere was Sina. No trace.
They parked near the church. The sky was turning gray.
“It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack,” Sven muttered. “If she’s been taken, we need another strategy. Something structured.”
Katja turned in place. “Marit, send us the photo. We’ll split up. Konrad, the supermarket. Marit, the bakery. Sven, the flower shop. I’ll take the pharmacy. The town isn’t large.”
Sven nodded, tapping his cane. “Good. One hour. We meet back here.”
The streets were still. The wind smelled of damp earth. A blackbird hopped between two posts.
The pharmacy door slid open with a soft whir. Katja stepped inside, photo in hand. The air smelled of herbs, disinfectant, and menthol. Behind the counter a slender man with a beard, friendly. An older woman browsed the shelves.
“How can I help you?”
Katja handed him the phone. “Do you know this woman?”
The pharmacist frowned. “Sorry… She looks ill. Liver, maybe kidneys, if you ask me.”
The older woman looked up.
Katja, tired and on edge, snapped, “If you were five hundred years old, you’d look like that too!”
The pharmacist froze, studying her anew. “No,” he said slowly. “I’ve never seen her.”
Katja nodded curtly and left.
“Five hundred years? Odd joke,” whispered the woman.
“Garz is sometimes a strange stage,” the pharmacist murmured back.
Sven entered the small flower shop, greeted by the earthy scent of lavender. A florist with a bun and green apron was tying sunflowers into a bouquet.
“I’m looking for someone. She’s missing.” He showed the photo.
She studied it. “She hasn’t been here. Looks… very sick.”
“She is,” Sven said.
“Is she… your mother?”
He gave a weary smile. “No. But it feels almost like it.”
He left the shop. A petal clung to his shoe.
Marit’s hunger stirred in the bakery, worse as she eyed the display. A customer ahead of her debated between streusel and apple cake. The smell of yeast and sugar was everywhere.
When she finally stood alone with the young clerk, she showed the photo. The girl shook her head. The baker came from the back, wiping flour from his hands. Marit showed him the picture too.
“No… she hasn’t been here. Looks like she fell straight out of a sickbed.”
“Could be,” Marit murmured.
“Sorry,” the baker said. “But if she turns up, the coffee’s on me.”
The supermarket’s cool air washed over Konrad, a display of bananas catching his eye. He showed the photo at the register.
“Nope,” said the cashier. “But over there… Mrs. Wernicke. She notices everything.”
Konrad approached her.
“Inspector Vohwinkel,” said the woman before he spoke.
He blinked. Where had they met?
“Five years ago. The break-in on Heide Street. Well, I don’t expect you to remember everything.”
He did remember, and her endless chatter.
She studied the photo. “No. She hasn’t been here.”
He handed her his card. “If she does turn up…”
“I’ll call. You can count on me.”
Katja returned to the square. The others were already waiting. Four people, four photos, no trace.
The sky was nearly black, the air heavy, yet still no rain.
Sven rose. “Let’s go home. Eight eyes see more than four.”
The road to Zirkow lay deserted. Katja glanced in the mirror: Konrad and Marit, two people finally drawing closer. Konrad’s hand reached for Marit’s. She looked shyly out the window, like a girl before her first kiss.
“You still haven’t told us how your meeting with Father Adrian went,” Katja said.
“Right…” Konrad cleared his throat. “Adrian believes the Monasterium Pax Viventium was never a place of faith. Beneath its walls was a vault. A laboratory. Alchemists, physicians, wealthy merchants. They wanted immortality. Or to trap the soul. Experiments on the living, the dying, and the dead.”
“And the abbots knew?” Sven asked.
“Apparently. Paid well for their silence. The brothers themselves, the real monks, knew nothing. They prayed and tended the poor, while in the vaults…”
“…people died,” Marit said flatly.
Silence fell.
“I don’t think Sina left of her own will,” Katja said.
“But because of what she is,” Sven added.
Konrad nodded. “If the Ordo Silentii never ended, then we’re dealing with people who know exactly what they’re doing.”
“And what they must conceal,” Marit whispered.
They turned into Katja’s street. The hedge stood tall. Something was wrong. Patrick’s old window was wide open. The curtains billowed. Schnief lay curled up in front of the door.
“Did we leave that window open?” Katja asked.
“Oh shit, yeah,” Sven said immediately.
Katja slammed on the brakes. They opened the front door carefully.
Inside, everything seemed familiar. The scent of lavender, coffee, paper. But in Patricks room it was different: the boxes, the folders, the documents—gone.
“Damn it,” Sven muttered. “The boxes… everything’s gone.”
Konrad inspected the window. “No traces. Whoever it was, this wasn’t a break-in. It was an operation. Quiet, perfect, invisible. By people trained on levels we can’t even imagine.”
“Just like your lab, Konrad, and Meike’s office,” Katja said.
Sven nodded. “There’s your answer whether the Order still exists. And we can’t report it. Nobody would believe us.”
“But what if everything really is under surveillance?” Marit asked.
“Then you’re right,” Sven said grimly. “But we don’t even know who we’re up against.”
“And who’s pulling the strings?” Katja murmured. “Was Sina an experiment? A lab rat that escaped?”
Sven dropped onto the sofa. “If everything’s gone and Sina’s dead… then it’s over. Somewhere there’ll be a file: Sina Fehrmann, born late eighties, mentally unstable, died under clinical care. End of story.”
He paused, his voice darker. “And if we stir too much… we’ll all see each other again in five hundred years.”
Then Big Ben’s chime rang out from Marit’s phone. Henning.
She put it on speaker. Before she could say a word, his voice came blasting out, slurred and half-singing:
“Sooooo pretty silver-white haaaair, blue are your eyyyyes… where are you all? I’m in your garden, you snow bunny!”
Katja raised her brows. “Snow bunny?” she whispered.
Konrad scowled. “And why does he get to call you ‘snow bunny’?”
Marit waved it off. “Henning, what are you doing in my garden? Is Sina there?”
Bottles clinked. A gulp.
“No Sina here. But I’ll tell you something… it’s all lies. All of it. Not what you think. All a fraud.”
The room went silent. Only Schnief nosed around their legs.
“What do you mean?” Katja asked.
“I found it…” Henning slurred. “I found Meike’s diary…”