FAME
Yasira takes her time on her way to the boss, hoping that the choleric’s anger will fade by the minute, but there’s only limited time to waste on a short journey without coming to a complete standstill. When she arrives at Gebhardt’s office, he’s still in a screaming mood.
Yasira even gets why. If one of her team had spoken to the press behind her back, she would have completely lost it too.
“I like my weekends,” Gebhardt opens as a greeting. “Don’t you?”
“Sure, I do,” sighs Yasira.
“And yet, here we are, spending the second weekend in a row in the office. What do you think might be the reason for that?”
Yasira tries to say something, but the chief doesn’t really seem interested in her answer.
“How dare you,” he shouts, “leak confidential information to the press against my direct orders?”
Yasira doesn’t know what to say to that. Sorry? But she’s not sorry at all. So she chooses not to say anything and lets him continue shouting at her: “The only reason you still have this case, the only reason I’m not making sure you’re suspended on the spot . . .”
The boss pauses. Yasira is actually curious.
“. . . is that it would cast a bad light on the BKA,” Gebhardt continues, quieter but still noticeably aggressive. “So we’re not going to deny it, because otherwise we’d prove to the world that we’re a chaotic mess where insubordination is out of control.”
Yasira stands in front of him, just nodding. The chief has not offered her a seat and is unlikely to do so any time soon.
“So we’re playing your game.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you personally get to give your press conference. State publicly what you’ve already stated behind my back. The BKA thinks it’s possible that the Lena video is a fake.”
Yasira can’t stop a little smile from creeping onto her lips.
“Don’t grin too soon. You’re the face of this theory now! I hope for your sake that you’re right! Otherwise we’ll be buried alive.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not doing this for you. And I will remember your demeanor. You’ve broken my trust. Believe me: one more mistake, one more impertinence and you’ll not only lose the case, but also your job. Then it’s time to dust off files in the archives.”
Yasira nods. Working in the archives is a thought that doesn’t seem so gruesome to her in the light of all the hustle and bustle of the last few weeks, but she keeps that to herself.
Before the press conference, she calls Frank Palmer.
He answers immediately. Every call from Yasira must put him under extreme tension.
A call from her could one day redeem him or seal his misfortune.
But not today. Yasira just doesn’t want him to hear about the state of the investigation from the news.
She tells him about her suspicion that the video is a fake.
Palmer says nothing for a long time. “That’s why you asked about the dress,” he finally says.
“Yes.”
“But where is my child?”
Yasira sighs internally. “We’re still looking for her, Mr. Palmer. We’re still looking for her with all our might.”
Yasira keeps the press conference short.
She only reads out a prepared statement outlining the technical feasibility of generating the video and emphasizes several times that it is not a question of the video being recreated, but that it could be computer generated.
She explains how Lena Palmer could have been inserted into the video with the help of the abundance of image material available about her, indicates that she may not have disappeared because of the events shown in the video, but rather that she could have been placed in this video because of her disappearance.
And yes, if her theory is correct, it also means that an innocent person was murdered in the first execution video, or that this video is also fake.
A press conference in the subjunctive. She could not answer any further questions at the moment, as this would jeopardize the investigation.
Tumultuous conditions break out among the assembled media representatives. Questions are shouted at random, but Yasira simply gets up and leaves the podium.
Now things really get cracking. Articles, blog posts and videos appear by the minute.
And not just in Germany. Her daughter finds Yasira’s picture in an article in The New York Times.
She sends the link to her mother with the hashtag FAME.
Yasira’s father forwards her a video from Al Jazeera.
She starts googling. Yomiuri Shimbun, The Times of India, even Pravda .
. . They all report on the new development.
If it’s at all possible, the video makes even bigger waves than before.
Yasira is now a celebrity. Whether she wants to be or not. And she doesn’t want to. Not at all.
From what Yasira can gather, people are divided over whether her theory is correct.
The nerds are surprised that the video has no glitches.
Otherwise, Yasira feels that belief or disbelief are strongly related to people’s world view.
The right wingers see this as further proof that the state is covering up crimes committed by refugees by any means necessary, and depending on their flavor, they also declare that this is just another step in the Deep State’s secret repopulation plan.
There is a lot of head-scratching from the middle ground and sentences like: “You don’t even know what to believe anymore.
” The left-wing camp clings to the fake hypothesis like a drowning man to a lifeline.
And of course everyone still wants to know what happened to Lena.
Much speculation revolves around the people behind all of this.
Who could be so ruthless? The answer: a surprisingly large number of people are deemed capable of it.
Bear and the Active Homeland-Protection are the most common answers.
But of course there are also some significantly crazier theories.
Not in the major media, but in blogs and videos.
“What if it’s aliens?” asks a guy who has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers on YouTube with Let’s Play Videos.
“Imagine if there were real aliens. Reptiloids or whatever. Some kind of critters. Space bugs. And they want to wipe us out. But they don’t do it in the old school Independence Day way.
Wouldn’t it be much smarter if they just set us all up against each other instead? ”
That’s obviously stupid. At least the part with the aliens. But maybe someone really does want to set us up against each other, Yasira thinks. Is she herself becoming paranoid now, or could that be possible? The Chinese? The North Koreans? The Russians?