The Eternal Return of the Same E-Book

Peter Schmalzl

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 400

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Bavarian Prime Minister Martin Schwertlein is a mystery. He's all confused, saying he fell off a horse, but the statue of Saint Emmeram caught him. In a villa where he's supposedly staying to relax, police psychologist Rolf Umberger is trying to figure out what really happened. It quickly becomes clear that Schwertlein's life revolves around power and control. But what is behind it all? Why is a blogger attacking him online? Why does a criminal software developer claim that Schwertlein needs AI to recognize emotions? And above all, what does this have to do with the incident at the statue?

Leseprobe

Any inconsistencies in the text are due to the fact that it was translated using computer-aided technology for a company-wide study.

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I

"The Prime Minister has fallen off his horse!" The news surprised me in three ways. Firstly, the voice of the head of the operations center at police headquarters sounded strangely agitated. Normally, the people there are very calm. "Well, we've got a shooting. Several dead. Probably several perpetrators with long guns ..." Even with reports like this, which take your breath away, they remain completely calm. Secondly, I was very surprised that, as a police psychologist, I was alerted in such a case. Normally, when people call me, someone is standing on a construction crane and threatening to jump down or holding his girlfriend, who wants to leave him, captive in the barricaded apartment. Things like that. And thirdly, the Prime Minister is normally an excellent rider. Everyone knows that. After all, when he saw an equestrian statue in Coburg as a schoolboy, he spontaneously decided to learn to ride.

In any case, the story that the head of the operations center, the LEZ, reported with unusual excitement and which I was later told, enriched with disturbing details, was as follows: The Bavarian Minister President Martin Schwertlein had visited the Munich police's equestrian squadron on Saturday afternoon. He wanted to experience the mounted operations first-hand. So he was driven to the English Garden. There he mounted a handsome bay horse and really enjoyed the way the charming police chief, whose horse he was allowed to ride, graciously held the stirrups for him. A smile, half thanks, half arrogance, then he galloped off and was soon no longer seen. No one could follow his hussar ride. Especially not his head of state, Werner Kneif, whom they had also maneuvered onto the horse. Kneif was fished out of the Schwabing stream seconds later. But wherewas the Minister President? They had to search for him for a long time. Meanwhile, the police were constantly receiving emergency calls. A wild rider with a flowing dark green loden coat was rushing through the undergrowth, chasing across the meadows of the northern English Garden, driving into a flock of sheep and jumping over the streams. Then it was said that a madman on horseback was rushing along the Isar as if the incarnate had entered him. Patrol cars to the right and left of the river had long been speeding north, a motorized chase with flashing blue lights and sirens. Munich had never seen a chase like this before. Finally the decisive clue came. At the St. Emmeram Bridge, which connects the English Garden with the Oberföhring district, a presumably confused man had been foundrunning up and down as if out of his mind and turning in circles like a dancing dervish, except that the fluttering dark loden coat made him look even more ghostly. He made horrible noises as if he was being martyred like the martyr Emmeram, who had been tied to a ladder to have his hands and feet chopped off more than thirteen hundred years ago. Later, in the ambulance, Martin Schwertlein had recovered quickly. He threw a few sentences at the paramedic. The horse, that devil, would have thrown himand hurled him against St. Emmeram. He would have taken him protectively in his arms and saved him.

In fact, there is a bronze statue of St. Emmeram not far from the bridge and the Prime Minister's hair was actually stuck to Emmeram's pious belly. We learned this from the forensics team. But the bad thing was not the concussion diagnosed on the spot by the emergency doctor and perhaps the resulting temporary confusion. The bad thing was that Martin Schwertlein, the mighty Prime Minister, usually tough and always a realist, would not stop moaning and shouting. "My brain, my brain! Who jinxed the horse? Who did this to me? I'll kill them all!", ... and so on. That's howit went all the time. Half the state government, which was now gathered around his sickbed in Bogenhausen Hospital, panicked.

So that was the moment when the head of the operations center called me. He told me to come to Bogenhausen Hospital immediately. Our boss, Chief of Police Rudolf Frühbeis - who was of course also part of the non-medical round along with the Minister of the Interior- had given the order. We had to be careful now. Calling in external experts, or even disclosing the consequences of the horse fall to the public, could have a devastating political impact. There would be state elections in six months' time. A prime minister with obvious roof damage! Unthinkable!

Perhaps it was just a temporary disorder. The doctors at the clinic thought this was conceivable. Of course, computer tomography and other examinations were immediately initiated to rule out brain damage, etc. The final findings were still pending. The final findings were still a long time coming. At first, people wondered about the symptoms, i.e. the way the Prime Minister behaved, especially the way he talked. This was not allowed to get out. The whole house was immediately sworn to secrecy, which is actually a matter of course among doctors, including the nurses, including the one from Syria, who hardly spoke any German anyway. I had met her outside Schwertlein's patient room. So as not to enter unprepared, I had asked her how the Prime Minister was doing and what his mood was like. She didn't understand me very well and excused herself by saying that she was from Syria and had only recently moved to Germany. She was very pretty and very shy, and despite our language barrier, I would have preferred to talk to her rather than Schwertlein. "Samira" was written on her name tag.

But the Prime Minister was now lying there peacefully and, without being asked, told him about the young policewoman who had whispered the nameof her horse in his ear: Flucki. Well, he would have liked Fury better. Fury sounds wild, untamed, just like his ride. I wanted to ask him about that. But first I introduced myself: Dr. Rolf Umberger, Head of the Psychological Service of the Bavarian Police. Police Commissioner Frühbeis was very worried. He had asked me to offer him, the Minister President, psychological support. Schwertlein nodded almost imperceptibly, as if to say: "That's what I thought!" His lips and cheeks twisted into a wry grin, only briefly, but you could see that it was meant contemptuously. "I've got enough care here," he said pointedly. "Now step aside so the nurse can take my temperature. As far as I'm concerned, come and see me tomorrow." In the excitement of being so close to the great father of the country, I hadn't even noticed that a nurse had stepped into the extremely spacious room. When I turned around, I saw Samira. She was smiling, but hardly looked at me, instead she was concentrating on the Prime Minister's ear with a kind of pistol. The thing in her hand was a fever gauge.

So Martin Schwertlein had granted me a second visit. He obviously didn't want to offend the Chief of Police and, above all, his superior, the Minister of the Interior.

The questions that the gentlemen tended not to ask themselves, but which concerned me all the more, were obvious: Was I even suitable for this "care job"? Did it suit me, my personality? Was I up to the expectations? Did I have the specialist skills? And above all: did I have the criminalistic and tactical flair needed to elicit the Prime Minister's secrets, should there be any, surrounding his strange Emmeram ride? One thing was clear: it was a real balancing act from the outset. On the one hand, I was supposed to provide meaningful psychological support, or at least pretend to do so, but in such a convincing way thatSchwertlein took my specialist psychological expertise off my hands, and on the other hand, I was supposed to eavesdrop on him, but in such a way that it didn't arouse his suspicions too much. So what did I bring to the table? As a qualified psychologist, I had over thirty years of service in the police force behind me. Now, at the age of sixty, I had experienced pretty much everything the police can offer a psychologist or demand of them: Tests for personnel selection, presentations, seminars, entire training concepts for basic and advanced training, support measures for police officers in crisis or after a difficult deployment, specialist advice in deployment planning or during a deployment, for example at demonstrations or large events, negotiations with hostage-takers, direct communication with acutely suicidal people or suspected mentally ill people who have armed themselves and are threatening others, scientific studies on the image of the police or their intervention behaviour, internal investigations when things are going wrong in a department or a reorganization is pending, and so on and so forth, an endless list. A blessing and a curse. Exciting, but also jumping from one field to another. Good, but did all this make me fit for my Schwertlein job? Only to a limited extent. I was neither a qualified clinical psychologist with a psychotherapeutic license nor was I trained in interrogation techniques by the criminal police. Providing psychological support to the Prime Minister and at the same time understanding his behavior and motives - which were particularly important for the police - was a big challenge!

After all, communication was one of the topics I was passionate about professionally. I wanted to give it a try.

II

When I visited the Prime Minister again the next day, on Sunday morning, I was initially unable to get through to him, even with communication efforts. He was preoccupied with himself. At least he was no longer shouting and complaining. Instead, I couldn't help but notice how he now adored Samira. When she brought him tea, it was the scents of the Orient. When he took her blood pressure, he conjured up the look in her wide eyes, a look that would awaken the life force in his veins. It was embarrassing. That said, Samira was amused. After all, she only understood half of it. Once again, Schwertlein had no need for me. But I had to report to the chief of police. What was I supposed to report?

Incidentally, Schwertlein was married and had two grown-up children. The older one, the son, worked in a renowned law firm in Nuremberg, the daughter studied in California. His wife was the manager of her parents' hotel in Bamberg. His wife and son arrived on the day of the riding accident, worried of course, but "not beyond measure", as President Frühbeis, who was present at the time, later told me.

"Well," said Mrs. Schwertlein, "my husband has always been able to talk stupid. And he has a hard head too. If the doctors don't find anything worse, he'll soon be back in the state chancellery."

The doctors didn't actually find anything worse. No brain trauma. Even the concussion was barely detectable. The "verbal derailments", as Frühbeis had called them, remained inexplicable and continued to cause concern; because what I was able to report to my president didn't really reassure anyone. In the meantime, of course, the criminal police had "investigated in all directions". Interestingly, the Prime Minister's bodyguards said that Schwertleinliked to go jogging with them in the northern English Garden. He regularly had himself driven to the Isarring, then ran with a bodyguard from there through the park and over the Emmeram Bridge and on to the Emmeramsmühle inn, where his chauffeur and the second bodyguard were waiting with the official vehicles. Sometimes he sent everyone away, wanting to be alone for two hours or so to meditate, as he said. In any case, Schwertlein knew the area well. It is all the more astonishing that he, the experienced horseman, should have fallen off his horse there or been thrown off by the good Flucki and found the belly of St. Emmeram lying to one side, not necessarily in the way, as a bruiser. Schwertlein's coat was slightly torn at the back seam and slightly soiled at the upper part of the back. The forensics team used tweezers to pull wool fibers from the cloak out of a small puddle of water. The puddle of water, however, was five meters away from Saint Emmeram! It was time to talk to the Prime Minister about it.

Samira had left Schwertlein's room so that he finally had, if not an eye, at least an ear for me.

"Mr. Prime Minister, I introduced myself to you as the head of the Bavarian Police's psychological service. You just nodded, perhaps smiled slightly. Apart from that, you don't seem to be interested in my presence. Well, I'm just a little light myself."

"You know, I'm constantly surrounded by little lights. Relax and tell your president that I'm completely okay again."

I would have expected a little more friendliness. There he was again, old Schwertlein, an arrogant man of power, the first to explain to everyone how mediocre to tiny they are next to him, the ruler and head of the Free State, whose fateful destiny has of course not yet come to an end with the office of Bavarian Minister President. Now he was sitting almost upright in his hospital bed withthree pillows that Samira had pushed under him, whereby she, like me at the moment, had had to smell his aftershave, truly not a scent of the Orient; sitting there with a wide white bandage around his head, like the soldiers in war films, and playing the great Zampano again.

Dr. Martin Schwertlein was in his late 50s, strikingly lanky for his age - as the media liked to describe him, of medium height, his face striking with numerous furrows and wrinkles, strong eyebrows and a dpenetrating gaze. The whole appearance was not unattractive, but somewhat unpleasant. He was not actually a trained professional politician, who had already acquired a party membership as a teenager and aspired to his first leadership positions in the party youth organization while studying law. He had studied history and some German language and literature in Erlangen, where he also met his wife. He later received his doctorate from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, magna cum laude, with a thesis on Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. It is curious that Schwertlein, who later became a power-conscious politician, chose the art-loving and politically liberal prince of all people. It was probably the equestrian statue in Coburg that fascinated him so much and which actually depicts the good Duke Ernst. He came to politics because a friend from university urged him to become mayor of the Upper Franconian town of Naila. He had the rhetorical talent and the ambition to make something special out of Naila or any other town, as well as the will to assert himself, and he always wanted to show others that he had what it takes, and so on. Schwertlein stood for election and won. Later, as District Administrator, he met the current Finance Minister Manfred Brezenegger. Brezenegger, a massive, red-faced, arch-conservative man from the Rosenheim region, became his great mentor and supporter. Above all, he fedttered Schwertlein with the political wisdom of the great leader of his party, who in turn was Brezenegger's mentor. "Look peoplein the mouth, but don't talk down to them," he taught him, and "you have to tell people what matters, not what matters." Those were fine words. Brezenegger certainly said them well and Schwertlein listened carefully. He was good at listening when he thought it would benefit him personally.

Incidentally, there is a story that helps explain why Brezenegger was so wholeheartedly committed to the "humanities scholar Schwertlein" - in Brezenegger's original words. Schwertlein likes to tell the story in great detail. For him, it is something like the origin myth of his grandiose political career. When Brezenegger met the aspiring district administrator Schwertlein, he invited him to a skiing day. It is only a stone's throw from Brezenegger's home town to the Tyrolean mountains just over the Bavarian-Austrian border near Kufstein. They went to Söll in the Wilder Kaiser ski area and from there took the cable car up to the Hohe Salve, not a particularly challenging mountain for the good skier Brezenegger, but not passable for a beginner. Once you reach the summit of the Hohe Salve, the first few hundred meters are steep downhill to the left and right, to the north and south. The northern flank is often slippery and icy, whereas the snow on the south side is nice and soft when the sun shines on it, but is then pushed together into unsightly humps by the racy wedge experts. Schwertlein couldn't actually ski. Brezenegger knew that too. Well, little Martin was on skis a few times, with his parents in the Franconian Forest and once on the Ochsenkopf in the Fichtelgebirge. That was about it. Later, he preferred driving fast cars and motorcycles, and if he was going to race, he preferred asphalt to snow. He hadn't expected Brezenegger, the scoundrel, to lead him straight up this mountain with its steep slopes. Now he was standing next to the Upper Bavarian, who was already shaking his hips impatiently, and had to decide left or right, ice slope or mogul slope. For a moment, Schwertleinthought about surrendering. But if he had said, "Manfred, I can't get down here in one piece", then he would have been down for good, Brezenegger would have dropped him. It was completely clear. While he was still thinking, he heard Brezenegger say from afar: "We'll take the north slope." It said and turned in the direction of this mirror-smooth abyss. Schwertlein next to him looked into the opening depths. But then the future Prime Minister had an experience that he had never been so aware of: the experience of fearlessness in tricky situations. Schwertlein knew no fear. Fear was something that others talked about, something that he perceived in others as a strange emotion, even as weakness, but nothing that he himself felt physically, no wildly beating heart, no shaking knees, not even clammy hands. All that was going on in his head were cost-benefit calculations: "Can I do it? Am I stronger than the other person? Is it advisable to give in?" Thoughts, but no feelings, cognitions, but no emotion. So Schwertlein looked down at the slippery slope and knew that he would slip, tip over or fall over on the first or second turn. The only thing that worried him was the idea that he might injure himself or, much worse, that he would cut a ridiculous figure as he hurtled downhill on the seat of his pants. He was still thinking when Brezenegger pushed himself off with his ski poles and danced down the slope. It looked elegant. At the bottom, where the slope flattened out, he made a fine braking turn and looked up at his party friend Martin. Now it was time. Schwertlein set off dashingly, pole right, then pole left. That was as far as he got. The skis slipped away from him. He hit his left hip and shoulder and off he went at breakneck speed. A wild slide. Snow dust in front of his eyes. The skis hit hard, the bindings opened and the freed boards tumbled downhill. The poles bounced in the loops, but he didn't lose them. Downhill skiers don't fall any differently after a fall! That was Schwertlein's only thought before he remembered that he could slow down with his ski boots. In fact, his unconventional descent slowly came to a halt after the hundred steep meters. Brezenegger only had to trudge a few steps towards him to help him up. "Clear," said Brezenegger, "everything okay?" Schwertlein, now standing upright with shaking knees due to the muscular exertion, first checked whether he could move his shoulder and hip joints and whether the pain was bearable. "Everything's okay!" he said, smiling a little tensely. He had passed his baptism of fire. Manfred Brezenegger was now his friend. The political path to the top was paved.

Of course, I didn't know the story of the steep fall that turned into a flight of fancy when I was standing next to Schwertlein's sickbed. Unfortunately.

"Mr. Prime Minister," I tried to remain polite despite his gruffness, "I have been asked to look after you, which means I am simply here for you. But in order to understand a little of what actually happened, I would like to ask you the following question: you stated on the record that the police horse threw you off the Emmeram Bridge in Oberföhrung. You were thrown against the statue of St. Emmeram and, as you can see, you suffered a head injury ..."

"Do you want to interrogate me now? I fell off my horse and against the statue. Anyone could make that up. That's all I know. I had a total blackout. It was only here in the care of the excellent doctors and, above all, the attentive care of nurse Samira that I slowly regained my wits. And now see that Kneif from the State Chancellery comes and I can discuss with him when and how I can resume my official duties."

A lot of things went through my head that I hadn't yet put together: the fall from the horse was strange, then the impact on the saint's bronze belly. No one would have beensurprised if Schwertlein's brain had been damaged. With my half-education in brain physiology, I thought to myself: He hit Emmeram with his forehead! With his forehead! Behind that in the skull is the prefrontal cortex, a damn important region of the cerebrum that is responsible, among other things, for ensuring that you behave appropriately in certain situations. If this prefrontal cortex is damaged, it is difficult to behave sensibly. This would explain Schwertlein's dance of St. Vitus and the crazy sayings and curses. But the medical diagnosis was: Nothing more happened. Just a concussion. You can't believe that! Then came the initial findings of the forensics team: hair on the statue, but threads of wool in the pool of water! No injuries on the horse, by the way, no abnormalities on the bridle or saddle ...

Of course, I couldn't share these initial findings with Schwertlein. If he didn't tell me anything, it became difficult to communicate. I could at least praise him, praise him for his hard skull, and that in his case we should have feared a lesion of the prefrontal cortex, that it was amazing how quickly he would recover, that we would all be very happy about it, and similar chatter. One-sided communication, very tough! Of course, I told him about the prefrontal cortex to impress him. I was waiting for him to say something back, even if it was just to contradict me or set the record straight. No response.

Fortunately, Werner Kneif, Head of the StateChancellery, and Christina Berggrün, the Minister of the Interior in her capacity as Deputy Prime Minister, appeared after a short time. The two of them acted very distressed, or perhaps they were, each with different ulterior motives. Kneif was Schwertlein's loyal confidant, his sword bearer so to speak, and he simply wanted to get out of the headlines. He had been through a steel bath of gloating andridicule over the last few days. Someone had been quick enough to film his par force ride into the Schwabing stream on their cell phone and post it online. It caused an international sensation under the hashtag #whatadiveforkneif. It's a shame that no one filmed the MP falling off his horse and against the statue, the opposition in the state parliament murmured to each other. Schwertlein would have been politically finished. For all time. Perhaps that would have been Berggrün's chance. Or so Berggrün thought. She was as ambitious as her boss was obsessed with power. It was by no means the case that her ambition had blinded her to the feasibility of personnel policy; she was too clever and too cautious for that. But her loyalty to the Minister President had, at least so far, stemmed from a calculation to make Schwertlein look big and strong until his party proclaimed him its candidate for Chancellor. Then, she believed, her own party would reach for power in the state parliament with her at the helm, at least after the next elections. This also applied in the event that Schwertlein did not make it to Chancellor, because he would then be considered a failure, both at federal level and in Bavaria. That's what you read in the editorials and commentaries in the press. You can imagine how such speculation tormented Schwertlein. It bothered him almost like Herod when he was asked where the new king of the Jews had been born. Schwertlein had probably already performed many a St. Vitus dance while reading the newspaper in the morning. But that is also speculation. In any case, he could be quick-tempered and irascible. That was evident again now.

"Martin, Martin," began Berggrün, "what do you look like!"

"What do you think I should look like after a fall like that? Be glad I'm still alive and thank St. Emmeram. His statue was hard, but at least I didn't fly who knows where. Otherwise I might have been whirled through the air and left lying on the ground with a broken neck."

Werner "the dive" Kneif looked at his boss with foreboding admiration.

"Martin, I can't believe that you're so fresh and alert after everything that's happened - and that you're already back on the attack!"

His gaze swept over the minister. There was this little triumph that was supposed to tell her: You're a long way from having the sword in your pocket!

"Sensational, Martin! Everyone talks about how tough you are, like Joe Frazier at the Thrilla in Manila against Muhammad Ali."

"That's all right, Werner. But Joe Frazier still didn't win back then. And anyway, it's nice of you to visit me, but I'd rather the doctors let me go now and I could discuss everything else with you in my office. For example, I want to ..."

"Not so fast, Martin," Berggrün interrupted him. "There are a few hurdles."

She said "Hüürrden" in a very stretched, very meaningful way, patting his left forearm almost tenderly. He let it happen.

"The whole world knows about your fall. Some are worried, others are laughing their heads off. On the net, but also in the press, even on TV, people are wondering whether you're still in your right mind. I mean, they're already questioning your sanity because of the devil's ride in the English Garden. Not to mention your fall and the consequences. Anyway, be glad that only an old couple saw you when you were doing your dance around the Emmeram. They simply made the emergency call and calmed you down. Imagine if you had been filmed like Werner when he dived headfirst and was pulled out of the stream like a rusty bike being cleaned."

"That's enough!"

Schwertlein would probably have burst its forehead veins with rage if the tight bandage around its head had not prevented it.

"You blasphemer! I forbid myself this tone and all this gossip - and you, Mr. Psychologist, get out now. There's a lot to make clear here."

I didn't get up from my chair and out of the door so quickly that I wouldn't have noticed how Schwertlein started up again.

"Once and for all: I am the Prime Minister. And what in the English Garden ..." was all I could understand, but I gradually learned the most important details from Ms. Berggrün.

From Bogenhausen Hospital, it is easy to take the streetcar to Oberföhring. A short walk from the terminus down to the Isar, and you're already standing in front of the corpulent saint. I looked up at his somewhat enigmatic face for a long time. I had to look up because they had also placed the larger-than-life Emmeram on a concrete plinth. He looks down at you with his eyelids slightly closed, removed from the world. His hands are blessing you, but it looks as if he is about to light a match, perhaps to light the way home for those who are pressing against his bulging belly like Schwertleins.

What had happened to our Prime Minister? I leaned against a tree and closed my eyes. Then he came bounding over the bridge from the left. His loden coat wafted over his horse's back like a giant bat. Schwertlein shouted: "I'll get you all!" His eyes were wide open, his teeth as big as his horse's. That was terrifying. I quickly opened my eyes again. "Well," I thought to myself, "it will be better to leave it to the police to solve the case."

III

Christina Berggrün summoned me to her ministerial office the very next day. Incidentally, in front of the Ministry of the Interior on Odeonsplatz and behind it on Wittelsbacherplatz are two huge equestrian statues that must have made a big impression on Schwertlein. It is astonishing, however, that he did not take King Ludwig I riding towards Ludwigstraße in front as his model, nor did he take the Elector Maximilian, who is riding away at the back. Both are raised on huge pedestals. Ludwig, majestically wearing a crown and purple cloak, flanked on the right and left by two pages, raises his sceptre high as if to greet the passing cars. Maximilian, on his square surrounded by former aristocratic palaces, now stands right in front of the power and control center of Siemens AG, which he shows the right way with a raised arm and index finger. Both, one might think, are of a completely different caliber than the good prince in the Hofgarten zu Coburg! I decided to talk to Schwertlein about it.

But first I had an appointment with Minister Berggrün. She kept me waiting for a long time. The Minister was still in a meeting. I walked up and down the corridor, which here on the ministerial floor is just as narrow and unadorned as the corridors everywhere in this convoluted building. After a while, the door to the anteroom finally opened. A tall, handsome man in a fine dark blue tailored suit, obviously not a civil servant, hurried out. He looked grumpy - and before he noticed me, he dabbed his lips carefully with a handkerchief. I know this gesture from myself. My wife always uses lipstick every day. I always have something to wipe off after a kiss, not always, but for example after a goodbye kiss when I leave our apartment. The elegantgentleman quickly put his handkerchief away when he saw me. We nodded briefly to each other and then one of the receptionists was already standing in the doorway to let me see the boss.

Christina Berggün was a tall, attractive lady, very chic in a cognac-colored suit with a blue silk top. Her blonde hair was cut relatively short and fell back in waves, a bit like Grace Kelly's in To catch a Thief. I don't know what color her eyes were. In any case, she greeted me warmly. She even smiled. It could be that my looks had revealed something to her that women still appreciate today. It could also be that I had become part of her much-discussed calculation. The latter was certainly the reason, but I didn't want to throw the first option overboard just because of that.

"Dr. Umberger," she got straight to the point, "we still urgently need you as a psychological advisor for our Prime Minister."

She responded to my objection that the Prime Minister had been declared largely healthy with an energetic hand gesture that brushed my argument aside. Then she leaned forward a little so that I would actually have had a chance to identify the color of her eyes. But I was actually so caught up in the prospect of having to spend more time with this Schwertlein that my gaze went completely blank. She must have sensed that too. As her upper body leaned slightly towards me, her voice softened.

"Look, I'll explain it to you and ask for absolute discretion."

Then came a somewhat long-winded explanation as to why Martin Schwertlein should not be allowed back into politics or the public eye at the present time. His reputation had been tarnished. There was far too much speculation in circulation. There was discussion on social media as to whether the Minister President had dashed off on his horse in a quasi-suicidal act, just as other life-weary people race down the highway at 200 km/h, or whether his ride should not be interpreted as an escape from the madness of his "reality-less" political existence towards a more self-determined life, with the final destination St. Emmeram, against whose belly he would have smashed his own skull, as if in frantic despair at the hopelessness of escape ... Some scribblers had obviously also ridden a horse here, namely Pegasus! The comments on the internet and in the tabloid press were confused and wild. Even the editorialist of a major renowned Munich newspaper bowed his head wisely in view of the political shambles that Schwertlein had left behind with his overall behavior. Therefore, according to Ms. Berggrün, one must insist on the only true version, which was announced as follows: "The Minister President suffered a minor head injury in an unfortunate fall from a service horse during a mission observation by the Munich Police Headquarters equestrian squadron. He is currently still convalescing and will resume his duties in full in the foreseeable future."

Well, I was glad about that. Nevertheless, I wanted to know carefully what "foreseeable time" meant, and where and how my "care" would be provided. Of course, everything had been thought of. With the charm of conceptual superiority, she enlightened me: My part had of course been agreed with Police Commissioner Frühbeis. He had released me from all other duties for two weeks.An official from the State Chancellery, a nurse from Bogenhausen Hospital and I would form the support team, and the bodyguards would of course be responsible for the Prime Minister's security. No one else was to know where Schwertlein was, neither his personal chauffeur and the chauffeur service nor his office nor the cabinet members and party friends, with the exception of Kneif. Until further notice, all of the MP's official business would be conducted by the Prime Minister representing, i.e. herself. A villa on the elevated eastern shore of Lake Starnberg had been found as a place to stay, in a wonderful location, currently empty, as the owner, name undisclosed, was in her second or third home in Italy. However, the business and kitchen staff would be on site. The Prime Minister had agreed to all of this after a very serious and initially controversial discussion of the options for political damage limitation. Dr. Schwertlein will simply disappear for around two weeks until no one is interested in the matter any more, and then come back all the more radiant, as if after a dip in the fountain of youth.

She didn't say anything about the fountain of youth, that's just my embellishment. The Minister of the Interior was far too cool in her deliberations and far too prosaic in her language to be inclined to use images and metaphors, except for the comparison with the rusty bicycle at the stream clean-up. She had probably stolen the picture to spite Kneif. She hadn't studied anything in the humanities like her boss either, but was a trained police officer with a stellar career, from patrol duty to the missing persons unit, then the homicide unit of the Munich CID to the office of vice president in the state criminal investigation department. Some people hated her for her success and accused her of all sorts of things. It was said that as a detective, she was determined to solve every case, but also every case. Even in court, it was important to her that a perpetrator she had convicted was punished appropriately. An acquittal for lack of evidence made her white as cheese with rage. Once she even cried uncontrollably. On another occasion, she forced a successful manhunt by means that could be considered borderline. She was the head of a special commission in a murder case, a suspected so-called honor killing. A seventeen-year-old girl from an eastern Anatolian family had been shot dead. The nineteen-year-oldbrother was suspected of the crime, possibly together with other family members. In any case, the nineteen-year-old went into hiding. Nobody gave any information until Christina Berggrün, of all people, received a crucial tip from the suspect's nine-year-old brother. Ms. Berggrün had forced the boy to watch a family video with her over and over again, which showed him, the nine-year-old, playing soccer with his older brother. The older brother was very affectionate towards the little one, stroking his head when he struggled with the ball. "Surely you want to see your brother again and play soccer with him again," she said to the boy. He capitulated at some point.

I felt sorry for the boy. The fact is, in addition to her irrepressible will and ambition, she had an extremely quick grasp of things, was able to analyze complex issues accurately and - what was decisive for her current position - she always thought politically. This soon caught the attention of the Minister of the Interior, who appointed her to the post of State Secretary as a lateral entrant. After his sudden death seven years ago, she wanted to succeed him politically. Schwertlein hesitated. Brezenegger and others were against it. So she switched parties and made a name for herself as an expert on domestic and security policy. By the next state election, she was already considered a ministerial candidate. The election went very well for her party and Ms. Christina Berggrün became Minister of the Interior. Schwertlein had even supported this. It seemed to me that he soon regretted it.

Mrs. Berggrün accompanied me to the door to say goodbye. Something was going through her mind. She was probably wondering whether she should tell me something or keep it to herself. In the end, the detective in her probably won out.

"And by the way, I can assure you that we will find out what really happened with the Emmeram statue. Perhaps you can even help us with that. But for now, enjoy your time at the villa on Lake Starnberg. Take care."

IV

So now I definitely knew what I was supposed to do "well": Help find out what was and is going on with Schwertlein. A kind of spy job. It wasn't hard to guess. Schwertlein had probably figured it out quicker than I had. His gruffness spoke volumes. But what brightened up the outlook for the next few weeks was the location, a villa on Lake Starnberg! That was a real surprise, almost like being told I had won a vacation with an overnight stay in a four-star hotel. In the police force, you are regularly accommodated in meagre official accommodation. It was mid-March and I had already seen myself somewhere in the snowy Alps while the minister was speaking, stoking the wood-burning stove in a mountain hut or staying in a barren monk's cell behind monastery walls. No, we would reside in a villa! After all, it was for the Prime Minister. I had to tell my wife that the Prime Minister was going on vacation and that I had the great honor of accompanying him for psychological support. Destination and duration of the trip unknown. Incidentally, Mrs. Schwertlein also had to travel. Her legend: With her husband and son to visit friends in France, a vague destination that was also probably not true. It was a confusing game that made your head spin like Schwertlein´s in Oberföhring.

The villa did not live up to the expectations I had of it in my middle-class fantasies. It didn't have a recognizable architectural style for me as a layman. Not a Wilhelminian style villa, more of a neo-Renaissance style with curves and oriels and a large raised terrace. Nor was it a house with a pre-Alpine look with finely darkened wooden façades and elongated balconies. Instead, it was a post-war mixture with alterations, at least with artistically forged grilles onall the windows on the first floor and with an alarm system and security doors based on the best recommendations from our technical prevention advice specialists. But I only found that out later. The biggest disappointment, however, was the location: no lake view! Yes, if you trudged up a hill and found a view between other properties, you could see it, the lake, a little of it. You had to take a long walk to get to the water. So I imagined the Prime Minister strolling down to the shore with me like King Ludwig II did with his psychiatrist in 1886. After all, they both died in the lake back then. If it was as many people think, namely that the king wanted to go into the water with suicidal intent and Dr. Gudden simply couldn't stop him, if that was really the case, then I'd better let Schwertlein go alone. At least it was advisable to keep a certain distance. Who knows what the Prime Minister was capable of in his crisis.

But there was also a surprise in this respect. As soon as we arrived at the villa and had settled in a little, Schwertlein blossomed.

"What a beautiful area. The good air. The birds are chirping. Spring awakening. Oh, I don't miss anything here, especially not politics!"

It kept bubbling out of him like this and similar. He seemed liberated from something. But it could also be that he was fooling us or himself. Liberation and redemption, pretense and pretense, who knew. Schwertlein was a tough nut to crack psychologically. I really didn't know if I could crack it. Samira, the nurse from Bogenhausen, liked Schwertlein's linguistic diarrhea. She used it to improve her German.

"Mr. Prime Minister, what is Vogel doing?"

"The birds are chirping," Schwertlein then declaimed. "They are chirping."

Samira was amused. Tweeting was her favorite word for days, especially when Schwertlein said it. He was also a natural rhetorician. No one could speak as pointedly, as polished, as cuttingly sharp, but also as gently, sensitively and almost lyrically as he could. Without this talent, he probably wouldn't have become a politician. Samira thought he was "so cute" when he said "tweet". But she only confessed that to me, I suppose. Incidentally, Dr. Schwertlein had vehemently insisted that Samira come along to his care. But it was also the only concession he was able to extract from Berggrün.

Ms. Samira Nazari came to Germany a year ago, at the age of nineteen. "Came to Germany" may sound like "traveled from Damascus to Munich with Lufthansa". Of course it wasn't like that. She later told me about her long, arduous and costly escape route from Syria via Turkey and south-eastern Europe, together with part of her family, and that she had to leave her mother and little sister behind and now misses them very much. Samira had already worked in nursing in her home town of Homs. She felt that the job at the Munich clinic was a stroke of luck. When I asked her hypocritically whether she also considered the care service with the Prime Minister a stroke of luck, she just smiled. She already had an enchanting smile. As radiant as the sun and as deep as the secrets of the Orient, Schwertlein might have said in one of his poetic moments. Perhaps he did. Was Schwertlein in love? A little bit, but we all were a little bit, including Mr. Regierungsrat Florian Ziegler, a young lawyer and personal advisor to the Prime Minister, and even the janitor. Otherwise, Ziegler did not give the impression that he was particularly interested in amorous adventures. He was constantly buzzing around his lord and master like a fly, handing him a signature folder here, a raincoatthere, always at his service, always agile, one could even say servile. Nevertheless, I didn't find him unsympathetic. For all his studious and subservient behavior towards Schwertlein, he was friendly towards us, smiled a lot, especially when he didn't quite know how to deal with us, whether in a relaxed, collegial manner like a good buddy or in a strict, obliging manner like a minor superior, when his boss was the great Prime Minister. Nice and companionable suited him better. He lacked the stature to be a superior. He was too awkward for that, and his chubby face with the wire-rimmed glasses and wispy hair just above it betrayed his young age.

The extremely nice janitor, Mr. Sebastian Fiegl, who was also slightly in love, and the cook, Mrs. Anna Graf, formed the "economic and kitchen staff" that we had been promised. Mrs. Graf was an excellent cook and sometimes her daughter helped out.

But one person, Tom, was really in love with Samira. When he was introduced, he just said: "I'm Tom." Tom was one of the bodyguards who took turns on duty. A natural, very reserved, sometimes almost shy, his head almost too small for his tall frame, his figure like after years of torture in the gym, not quite like the young Schwarzenegger, but strong enough to just about fit into his uniform, i.e. his dark suits. He looked handsome. However, his forehead had already extended far upwards towards his thinning short hair. That made him look older. He was even younger than Ziegler, in his late twenties. It was touching to see how Tom courted the young woman. "Samira, can I pour you another glass of water?" His eyes lit up as if he were pulling an engagement ring out of his pocket and saying: "Can I give you this little ring?" But he was shy and Samira was friendly and reserved. On the other hand, what does that mean in the long run?

Martin Schwertlein took command from day one, and he had his ship's bridge to do so. The entrance hall of the villa extended into a spacious hallway with a curved staircase leading up to a gallery. The banister continued at the top in a balustrade with white turned rods. There on the gallery, with a firm grip on the handrail, he stood like a captain, giving orders or just gazing pensively over us. He was either looking for the open sea or the nearby lake or his political destiny. I decided to ask about that too.

For the time being, he announced that he wanted to give a speech to his people. All right, he said he would like to record a video message to all his fellow citizens and Ziegler should ensure that it is broadcast everywhere.

The message was, not surprisingly, quite long and expansive. It began like this:

"Dear fellow citizens, it is a great pleasure for me - as your Prime Minister - to send you warm greetings from my enforced vacation in France."

The "forced" was of course a slight dig at his deputy, but was probably intended to mean that he would much rather pursue his important political office than have to recuperate here.

"You see," he continued, "my laceration to the head has healed and I am actually already fully recovered. I am eager to be able to serve you and our beloved Bavaria again as soon as possible."