The Games is a humorous but dark, even mean, political thriller. This mother of all conspiracies starts slow but the action accelerates quickly. Good guys don't win in the end because there are none. It's a battle of evil against evil involving environmental protection organizations operating extortion rackets; terrorism without a cause; secret services running amok; global television networks manipulating the news; politicians and profiteers hijacking major international sport events; etc.
More than just humor and action in an international setting, this thriller exposes a dark side of our information age and reveals a serious political threat to our democracies: conspiracies to use information, communication, and storytelling to establish power structures not accountable to anyone.
Power without accountability undermines the principle of representative government by the people and for the people. Therefore, the relevant question in The Games is not "who did it and why" but "what if these things come to pass."
The Games is the fiction part of the Twin Projects: Berlin. The graphic, non-fiction part is the photographic essay The Lace Curtains of Berlin. Both available as paperback and ebook.
PLOT SUMMARY
The Games is the account of Berlin's last six months, before it was destroyed by an atomic bomb on June 2013, Summer Solstice Day
The Frenchman Claude Tegel, the first president of the United States of Europe, wants to get reelected. He badly needs the German vote, but his German political allies will only support him if he helps bring the 2021 Games to Berlin
Claude will hire Madeleine Orly to organize Berlin's bid. Back in 1994, when Claude was mayor of Paris, Madeleine won the bid to stage the 2001 Games there. Can she pull it off again, twenty years later? Maybe, if she can bring GreenKraut on board.
GreenKraut is the biggest environmental protection organizations operating in the U.S.E. Its CEO, Dr. Hans von Adelsberg, wants to take over all his competitors in the U.S.E. before GreenKraut starts its global expansion. A bloody Green War has just started. Getting involved in the bid could accelerate GreenKraut's victory.
Graham Gatwick, the owner of LIBL-TV, is backing London's bid for the 2021 Games. LIBL-TV will start a smear campaign to discredit Berlin.
This campaign will be a gift from heaven for Eliza Heathrow, a young American journalist living in Berlin. A plumber will help her obtain the damaging information LIBL-TV needs. He is a plumber only in the figurative sense of the word, since he "fixes things that are broke" and "stops leaks."
The only person with absolutely no interest in the Games is Rainer-Werner Sprengberg, a former terrorist now on parole after twenty-five years behind bars. He is an analog human being lost in a brave new digital world. He spends his days walking around Berlin and photographing lace curtains.
Rainer-Werner's analog ways will attract Marianne Wissensberg, a young historian researching terrorism. She needs his help to create a fake terrorist group for the sole purpose of studying people's reactions. Rainer-Werner will fall for Marianne's seduction games and together they will set up the Atomic Outcasts. The city of Berlin will be threatened with total destruction if it doesn't drop its bid for the Games.
Ismail Kahnahkah, a third-generation Turk, will also create a terrorist group. He will wage a very old-fashioned terrorist war, using real guns to kill real people. He will also want Rainer-Werner's help.
Berlin's bid will bring together all these people. They will play games, crossing and double-crossing each other, each of their actions provoking multiple reactions. Things will get out of control, culminating in Berlin's destruction on Summer Solstice day, June twenty first, 2013.
