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     every four meters or so.
    Mattie peered closer at the floor. It was covered in old trash and dust.
    “No footprints,” she muttered to Burkhart, who’d stepped inside.
    “Probably came in from the other end.”
    Mattie stepped into the hallway after Burkhart, who moved forward like a cat while flashing his light into the side rooms.
     Trash. Rat shit. Graffiti. Grime. And bolts sticking out of the wall about knee high and again about shoulder height.
    Seeing the bolts, Mattie felt a distinct sense of menace around her.
    “What did they do in here?” she whispered to Burkhart.
    He twisted his head quickly. His neck made a cracking sound. “Look like animal stalls to me. They probably kept the livestock
     in here awaiting slaughter.”
    It made sense. But Mattie could not shake that sense of threat. Indeed, the closer they got to the barn doors at the end of
     the hallway, the more pronounced the feeling became.
    She could barely breathe when Burkhart slid back one of the double doors.
    Pigeons spooked and flapped toward the empty windows.
    “East wall,” Mattie said.
    She and Burkhart both swung their beams in that direction, hearing Gabriel say: “He should be right there at thirty meters.”
    Mattie felt her heart sink as their beams played over garbage, rusted bolts jutting from the floor, and old pipes sticking
     out of the wall. “No one here, Doc.”
    “What? That’s impossi—” Gabriel paused. “There, he’s moving.”
    “Moving?” Burkhart said. “He’s not moving. He’s not here.”
    “I’m telling you he’s moving north along that east wall.”
    But they saw nothing but cobwebs, dirt, and old bottles and trash.
    Then Mattie caught a flicker of movement and heard glass rolling on cement. She swung her light, the powerful beam finding
     an enormous rat that froze, blinded, sitting up on its haunches, staring into the light, eyes blinking, and nose twitching.
    There was something shiny between its teeth.
    Boom!
    The gunshot surprised Mattie so much she jumped hard left, landing and then tripping on one of the bolts on the floor. She
     sprawled in the dirt.
    She glared up at Burkhart. “What the hell did you do that for?”
    “It had something in its mouth,” Burkhart said, crossing to the east wall, light trained on the dead rat. As Mattie struggled
     to her feet, he crouched over the rodent a moment, then stood and turned to face her. “We need to call in Kripo now.”
    She felt her heart break. “Why?”
    Burkhart held up what looked like a thin hearing aid battery partially wrapped in a chunk of gnawed and livid flesh.

CHAPTER 7
    HAVE YOU EVER seen that old movie The Invisible Man ?
    Claude Rains, the same guy who played the enigmatic French captain in Casablanca, stars as a mad scientist who turns homicidal after he figures out how to erase his visible body.
    Not surprisingly, it’s one of my absolute favorite films of all time.
    One scene in particular never fails to leave me howling with laughter. In it, Rains is covered in bandages and has taken refuge
     at an inn run by the Irish actress Una O’Connor. She happens to enter Rains’s room when he’s removed the bandages on his head.
    He looks decapitated, but alive.
    O’Connor’s eyes bulge. She goes over-the-top insane. She starts to shriek bloody murder.
    It’s my special moment. One I wish I could re-create in my own life.
    But alas, attaining invisibility is an art more than a science.
    For instance, I have found over the past twenty-five years that the best thing you can do to remain unseen is to relax and
     inhabit your mask so thoroughly that people come to think nothing of you, especially in Berlin, my beautiful city of scars.
    I’m not being poetic here. I’m telling you the truth. Pay attention now.
    My friends, let me state unequivocally that if you are relaxed in Berlin, comfortable in your own scarred skin, and not causing
     outward trouble, the millions of scarred Berliners around you will just go