Anja and Marie Kohl

The two women weren't people the Machine was absolutely certain would come to the funeral, but she felt she had to at least invit them. They could decide whether or not they'd come themselves.

The facts were, John Reese hadn't saved their lives, since Ulrich Kohl had never planned to harm his wife and his daughter. Actually, he had wanted John Reese to kill him, by pretending to threaten his wife and daughter, because he couldn't bear to live without them. Which meant, John Reese had killed him right before the eyes of Anja and Marie Kohl.

The mother and daughter deciding not to come was one of the possible outcomes.

But the Machine still sent a letter to Anja Kohl, three days after Primary Asset n°1's demise, in a kraft paper envelope. When the woman saw it in her mail box, she looked for the sender, and didn't recognize the name of Ernest Thornhill.

When Anja Kohl opened the envelope, and saw an obituary for the man who had ultimately killed her husband, she almost threw it in the trash can. Something kept her from completing that gesture.

Probably the feeling that, if Ulrich had played such a part in his own death, if he had forced the stranger in a suit to shoot, it was because of her own actions. "John Reese", or whatever was the man's name, because Anja Kohl knew enough spies to recognize one in such circumstances, wasn't to blame her husband's death.

Ulrich had brought it upon himself the moment he had agreed to work for the Stasi, just like this "John Reese" had probably accepted, the day he had become a spy, that he wasn't likely to die an easy death.

And Anja had been the one to sell her husband, to abandon him. Certainly she wouldn't have been able to live with him, to let him see their daughter, with what she knew now. But it didn't matter here. The police had said Ulrich's gun had been unloaded; he had played them all, because he wanted it to end, and her to be free of him, definitely. If she had thought him to be a monster, able to murder his own daughter, Anja Kohl wouldn't have regretted his death.

Unfortunately for her husband's plan, she hadn't been fooled.

All in all, "John Reese" had only tried to help them. He couldn't have known Ulrich's plan. And even if he had, he'd have only been granting her husband's last wish.

Which was something Anja Kohl could be grateful for.

She didn't know how Marie would react to the invitation. But Marie had never met her father, not until he had pointed a gun at them. No matter what, to Marie, the stranger had saved them.