"You can still save one life," Andrew reminded his guest.
A small ampoule was stuck between Paul Moss's back molars, which would inevitably break as soon as the cork disk no longer supported his front teeth.
Any shaking of the motionless man or even his bed could cause his teeth to collapse and the glass to shatter.
"Your grandfather's cyanide capsule," recognized Elizabeth, who had noticed the picture of Karl-Wilhelm Moss in his SS uniform in the hallway. "You inherited it along with the pistol."
"He was a brave man," Andrew replied. "Unfortunately, he was no longer able to use the capsule himself. After his arrest, he had to hang himself undignified from a belt. You know, my grandfather wasn't above doing the dirty work either. Unfortunately, he was under the wrong commander, a madman who didn't realize what we should have been fighting against. But we can't blame my grandfather for that; he didn't give the orders after all."
Andrew took a deep breath; he was tense and still sweating profusely. Then, he smiled at his father again before turning to the lieutenant with a sincere sense of respect. "We should have met much earlier. You seem to be one of the rare people who can still give our society hope." Then he pointed to the bedside table with Elizabeth's service weapon. "You can try to grab it. In the time it would take you, I could pull the cork disk out of my father's mouth and put an end to his suffering. Or you could try to take the capsule out of his mouth." He reached into his right inner pocket and pulled out his grandfather's Walther. "Unfortunately, I'd have to shoot you in return."
Elizabeth looked calmly back and forth between her service weapon, Paul Moss, and Andrew, who was standing too far away from her to take him by surprise without danger. "You could shoot me while I'm trying to reach my gun," she stated matter-of-factly.
"I could," Moss confirmed. "But that would go against our agreement, and you're standing before a man of honor. After all, I promised you that you could save another life. So make up your mind!"
Often, it is basically a case of relationship crimes that the perpetrator would like to commit but cannot. "You wouldn't kill your father," Elizabeth now insinuated to Andrew. "You can't do that. If you could, you would have done it years ago."
Andrew did not respond to this accusation. Instead, he raised his gun, pointed it at the lieutenant with a shaky hand, and began to quote without having to read it.
"May you never, boy, lose your courage
Life is grateful to him, who is always good!
And even in sickness, in times of sorrow,
nothing is more precious than time on earth.
For what is not today, maybe tomorrow,
never despair, as long as your heart is pure.
The little book, my boy, which now lies before you,
shall always accompany you, so look at what you see:
Elizabeth was a blinded fool; every life seemed worth living to her.
She protected the wicked and punished them without regard, even those who only brought pleasing to the people.
She hunted the avenger, so now she lies dead
on the ground, shot in miserable misery.
Only in right is life; in evil, there is none.
So remember, my boy: follow the One!"
Paul Moss lay motionless on his bed, the capsule clenched between his molars. The helpless man watched the events unfold without any chance of resistance.
"It's about time," Andrew said. "I haven't written your poem in the book yet. There are no pictures of your corpse yet. I've already prepared an alternative first chapter. You can decide which one you want to start the story with." He pointed to the drawer from which he had taken the album. There was a large sealed envelope inside. "Will you save your own life or that of a terminally ill old man who put his child in a coffin and buried it in the garden?" As if to finally force a decision, Andrew pointed his gun directly at Elizabeth's head and, with a frightening coldness in his voice, asked the question he had asked his victims so many times before. "How do you like being dead?"
Elizabeth could look straight down the barrel of the gun. She recognized the fear written on Andrew's face as his biggest problem. His fear could cause him to deviate from his plan. "I know whose life you mean," she said politely, smiling in the hope of reassuring Andrew. "I'm not supposed to save mine or your father's. I'm supposed to --"
"Drop the gun, now!" the lieutenant was rudely interrupted.
Elizabeth recognized the voice immediately and closed her eyes with a sigh. "Careful, his father has a poison capsule in his mouth!" she shouted to Nick, who had entered the house through the open garden door and crept carefully up to Paul Moss' bedroom.
"I've told you everything I can," Andrew said quietly, looking at Elizabeth pleadingly. A drop of sweat wet his upper lip.
"I know," the lieutenant replied.
"Put the gun down!" barked Nick. "And get off the bed!"
Andrew looked desperately at his father, keeping the gun pointed at Elizabeth. "It feels good," he said to the old man. "Being dead is a nice feeling, full of peace and security. It always hurts at the beginning of a change, but once the evil has been eradicated, the gates are open to harmony and unity." Only then did he point his gun away from Elizabeth and towards his father's head.
Elizabeth lunged, not towards Andrew, but towards Nick, who stood just a meter behind him in the doorway.
She was on top of her brother-in-law in a flash, causing both investigators to fall to the floor. A shot was fired from Nick's service weapon, but it only hit the ceiling before the detective's gun slid under the bed.
Andrew took the opportunity to fire two shots in the direction of the cops, but they hit the wall above them at a safe distance.
Then Andrew looked at his father again and, without batting an eyelid, pulled the cork disk out of his mouth, causing his jaw to clench and the glass capsule to shatter.
Andrew turned away from his father, fired once more into the wall to stop the investigators from getting up again, and then ran out of the room as fast as he could.
"The man is in a vegetative state; he can't swallow! Try to wipe the poison out of his mouth before his mucous membranes absorb it quickly!" Elizabeth shouted at Nick while songs from the 1940s played quietly from the first floor. Then she straightened up, grabbed her service weapon from the bedside table, and took up Andrew's pursuit. She had a good idea where Andrew had run off to. "Your father wasn't The One, and I certainly wasn't," Elizabeth explained calmly, having found Andrew in front of the grave in the garden as expected.
He stood directly in front of the pit, his back turned to Elizabeth and at a reasonable distance. He held his grandfather's gun in his right hand, the barrel pointed at the ground.
"You are the one. You wanted me to shoot you in self-defense so that you could die the martyr's death that your grandfather was not granted. That's why you wanted me to come to you alone. Because you respect me."
Tears welled up in Andrew's eyes as he replied to Elizabeth in a brittle, almost friendly voice, "Who wants to be judged by an unworthy person?"
Elizabeth held out her hand to Andrew. Even if he couldn't see it. "Give me the gun, Andrew."
Andrew's tears ran down his cheeks, some dripping onto his ancestors' medals. "The book," he began without responding to the lieutenant's request. "It won't do you any good if you let it disappear into the evidence room. The work is my legacy to mankind and will be made public! I've made sure of that."
"As long as you still love someone, you shouldn't give up, Andrew," Elizabeth tried to dissuade her counterpart from his apparent plan to shoot himself and then topple symbolically into his coffin in the pit.
"Love is a selfish impulse," replied Moss. "Individuals take themselves far too seriously. We're all just a tiny part of a big whole. And I'm willing to give up everything for that. Even my selfish little love."
Now, Andrew turned to Elizabeth with ominous calm. The determination the lieutenant could see in his face, despite the dim light, seemed unshakeable.
Elizabeth could now also see that Moss had hung the medal with the one around his own neck. It seemed to complement the medals of Andrew's forefathers.
"Stop it!" a breathless voice broke through the threatening atmosphere.
"Dr. Isles?" Andrew wondered at Katherine's unexpected appearance.
"Have you forgotten everything we talked about?" the psychiatrist asked, her hands raised peacefully in the air, her brow furrowed.
"Sometimes things just work out differently," replied Andrew, who now heard the first emergency services arriving outside the house. He rocked his upper body forward three times, then looked at Elizabeth and said, "My father is alive. That wasn't my grandfather's cyanide capsule in his mouth."
Elizabeth exhaled slowly. "Good," she said with relief, not losing sight of her counterpart's still-ready weapon.
Katherine, meanwhile, watched in horror at what was unfolding before her eyes. As the RRT officers audibly approached them, Andrew finally dropped his weapon and shouted with equal parts anger, fear, and determination, "For the sons of this world!" He saluted Elizabeth and Katherine before whispering more quietly, "This is my grandfather's cyanide capsule!"
Before anyone could intervene, Andrew pulled the vial from his right jacket pocket, put it between his teeth, and took a bite.
While more cops stormed the property and the sirens of their cars bathed the whole street in their blue light, the songs from the 1940s were still playing from the loudspeakers in the house, even if nobody could hear them anymore.