The Second Warning

Anna presses Otto to visit her brother Ulrich Heffke for his birthday, against Otto's wish to stay home and write; he relents once he has finished two cards. Getting off the U-Bahn early near Bülowstrasse to make a drop, Otto disappears into a building on Winterfeldtstrasse while Anna waits outside in mounting dread. He emerges with a tall stranger with a disfiguring red birthmark, and the two pass her without a word; terrified he is arrested, Anna breaks cover and greets Otto as 'Herr Berndt', inventing a burst pipe to draw him away. The stranger proves a doctor, summoned when he caught Otto mid-drop and demanded to know why he was there; Otto claimed to be fetching him for a sick wife, giving the false name Schmidt and the address Von Einem Strasse. Walking on, Otto admits he had a bad feeling all day and wants nothing more to do with Nollendorfplatz; Anna, shaken, takes the remaining postcards for safekeeping.

Anna's improvised rescue, inventing a name and a burst pipe on the spot, shows her matching Otto's nerve exactly when he has none left, reversing the protective roles the previous chapter assumed. The near-miss is the second of three escalating warnings the title sequence promises, each closer than the last.