Lee Goldberg: McGrave

McGrave can't believe what he is hearing. "So everything you know about being a cop you've learned from books?"

"Of course. That's how it's done." She takes the dishes into the kitchen.

McGrave follows her. "No, it's not. You can't develop instincts from a book. You've got to be out there, on the streets, living it."

"That's ridiculous," she says, taking the dishes from him and putting them in the sink. "Officers prevent crimes and protect people from danger. Detectives investigate crimes and pursue the offenders. They are two entirely different skills. A detective must be highly educated."

"Where I come from," he says, "the university is the street."

"Where I come from," she says, "the university is a university."

"That explains a lot about the police work I've seen from you today," McGrave says.

He regrets the remark almost the instant he's said it, but it's too late.

"Likewise," she says. "Good night, Detective."

She leaves the dishes in the sink and marches off to bed.

The squad room is busy. Maria is at her desk, reviewing a file. Stefan is working the phones. Heinrich is doing something on his computer and eating chocolate somethings from a yellow bag with a picture of what looks like five pieces of horse crap on the front.

McGrave strides in wearing the too-small shirt that Maria gave him under his leather jacket. The pants are a little tight, too. He's holding a huge box of Dunkin' Donuts.

"Look what I found. Some real cop brain food." He sets the box down in front of Heinrich and opens it up to reveal dozens of mixed doughnuts as if they were gold bars. "Feast on this, my friends, and you shall solve all the world's crimes."

"No, thank you," Heinrich says. "But you are welcome to one of these."

He offers McGrave the open bag of Zetti Knusperflocken Vollmilch Schokolade mit Knдckebrot.

McGrave peers inside the bag and shakes his head. "What is it?"

"Knusperflocken. One of the few treats left from the GDR. I have to order it on the Internet now."

"You lived there before the wall fell?"

"I was a Volkspolizist. Duke was, too. In the East, it was different. The people didn't dare break the law. The police were respected and feared. Here there is much lawlessness and they spit on our shoes."

"Do you miss it?"

"No, the police should not be feared. But I miss the strict adherence to the law. And the food was better."

McGrave takes a doughnut. Heinrich has another piece of Knusperflocken.

Neither of them is ever going to change.

"What have you got on Richter?" McGrave asks.

"He goes all over the world staging major heists and doesn't mind killing. He was reportedly trained by the Bundesnachrichtendienst."

"What's the Bundy-what's-it?" McGrave asks.

"Our CIA," Heinrich says. "That explains why he's never been caught. Richter probably still does a few jobs for them, so in return they make sure he doesn't show up in the system."

"Richter said he's prepping a job right now," McGrave says.

Stefan hangs up the phone. "That fits with what the detectives in the robbery division just told me. There's rumors floating around that somebody is looking for alarm specialists, tunnelers, and a wheelman for a big job."

"Are Richter's two gun monkeys saying anything?" McGrave asks.

"Not a word," Stefan says.

That's when Maria comes over. "They don't have to. Their shoes are talking for them."

"Their shoes," McGrave says.

"I had the forensics unit analyze their clothing and the van they used to abduct you," she says. "A soils analysis of the dirt particles found on their shoes and the undercarriage of the van points to one place."

"Which is?" McGrave asks.

Maria and McGrave stand on a mound of excavated dirt in a vacant lot in the Mitte, formerly the administrative center of the Third Reich and, after the war, the GDR, too. The office space was, after all, already designed to meet the needs of those engaged in the hard work of censorship and oppression.

Today there are construction cranes everywhere, and big, elevated blue pipes snake along the side streets and major boulevards.

"Ever since reunification, there's been a construction boom in Mitte," Maria explains. "The wastelands and abandoned buildings left behind when the wall fell became prime real estate for development and renovation. I think it's finally coming to an end. Thank God."

The blockish, symmetrical buildings are nearly flush with one another and were designed to reflect Hitler's "Words of Stone" monumental style, espousing a message of rigid order, intimidating power, and enforced conformity.

They still do, only now they're adorned with polished stone and glass and buffed to a Disney gleam, and they proclaim the enduring and awesome power of money, the virtues of accumulating wealth, and the importance of spending what you have on the priciest material goods you can afford.

"What are those elevated blue pipes I see everywhere?" McGrave asks.

"They move the groundwater from the construction sites to the river," she says. "It's the unique nature of that sediment that allowed us to trace the dirt in Richter's van back here."

McGrave looks around him, trying to get his bearings. But it's not easy.

All the buildings are the same height and shape and topped by three terraced stories, creating an unbroken roofline down every street, so they appear to be part of an immense wall, broken only by the side streets.

It's almost like McGrave is standing in the center of an immense labyrinth.

And within that labyrinth, there are scores of galleries, jewelry stores, banks, and museums. There's even a billboard by the construction site advertising an exhibition in Mitte of Fabergй eggs.

Any one of those places could be Richter's next target.

Maria's cell phone rings. She answers it, says something in German, then turns to McGrave.

"Excuse me," she says. "I need to take this."

She steps aside, out of earshot. But a breeze kicks up and McGrave's attention is suddenly drawn to something else a half block away.

He heads across the street, weaving through the traffic and across iron plates laid over trenches cut into the asphalt, and on past several storefronts, until he reaches a gallery with a large, banner draped across the top four floors. He'd caught a glimpse of it fluttering in the breeze.

The banner is in German, but it depicts glassware and ceramics, including the item that attracted McGrave-a pot that looks just like the one destroyed in the shoot-out in Ernie Wallengren's house.

Maria marches up to him. She seems angry. "Looking for some souvenirs?"

"Tell me what the banner says."

"It's advertising an auction of rare Egyptian antiquities. The auction is tomorrow, but you're going to be-"

"On a plane back to Los Angeles with Richter handcuffed beside me," McGrave says, interrupting her and pointing at the banner. "Because that son of a bitch is going to try to steal Nefertiti's toilet tonight and I'm going to be there to catch him."

####

Torsten "Duke" Schneider and Maria stand side by side in front of a full house of detectives, briefing them in English, out of deference to McGrave, on the operation that they've hurriedly put into motion.

On the wall behind Torsten and Maria is a street map of Mitte as well as photographs of the interior and exterior of the auction house, schematic diagrams of sewers, and other blueprints.

"We believe that Richter and his new team will strike the auction house tonight and use the World War Two-era tunnels beneath Wilhelmstrasse to do it," Maria says. "The construction work in the area provided the perfect cover for him to access the tunnels and dig his way beneath the auction house without raising any suspicion."

Torsten uses a pointer to indicate spots on the street map.