Tödliche Wahl, 1
The film starts with Eva Sachse going shopping with her daughter Conni. They live in Darmstadt, a small town in the south of Germany. From their conversation you get the impression, that Conni doesn't want to visit her mother, because she doesn't like the man Eva lives with, Alex. After they have parted, Eva goes into a little food shop run by a Turk. While she is chosing, a group of masked men storms into the shop, they demolish everything and beat up the owner. Eva is frozen with shock and fear. After the intruders are gone, she calls the police but then runs away, home.
At home, her partner, Alex Bronner (Jürgen Prochnow) is still in bed. She wakes him up and tells him about the attack at the shop. She is appalled, when he doesn't react with the horror, that she feels herself; instead Alex tries to find explanations for the behaviour of the attacker, probably young neo-Nazis. He argues that in order to do something against their movement, you have to understand what motivates them, like trouble to find work or anything meaningful to do with themselves. Alex runs a pub and Eva accuses him of sympathising more and more with the right-wing since he took over this pub, called "Burg Rheinfels".
Meanwhile Conni is in a cafe, calling somebody in her flat. She is telling him, probably the now ex-boyfriend, to leave before she comes home and leave the keys on the table. When she gets home later on, she finds him gone all right, but he left a threat.
In the afternoon, Alex goes to work in the pub, there is the debris from last night's party to be cleared from the back room. On the wall is a flag with a swastika. He has hardly started, when he gets a telephone call from somebody, who asks him to come and meet him. Alex leaves at once and goes to a quarry, where a group of young men are having not very successful, target practice under the instruction of an older man, Naumann, who was the one calling Alex.
Alex Bronner seems to supply Naumann with weapons and ammunition in return for money and favors, like the lease of the pub and getting him a cheap flat from a building society. Alex negotiates with Naumann about getting him a bigger flat, if he wants more ammunition. Afterwards, Alex shows the young guys how to shoot properly and tells them that he used to be a policeman. They don't want to trust him, but after Alex has left, Naumann explains that Bronner was sacked and even sent to prison for a while for stealing and selling impounded drugs. The whole scene has been watched by a couple camouflaged as a pair of lovers.
Alex goes back to a normal evening's work in the pub: while there are normal neighbourhood customers in the front, neo-Nazis gather in the back room. From the talk given by one of the leaders it becomes clear, that they killed the Turkish shop-owner, the talk gets loud applause. The group thinks that there are far too many foreigners in Germany, mostly asylum-seekers, either not working just being pampered on German money or working and taking jobs away from Germans. As the politicians are not going to change anything about this situation, the neo-Nazis aim to create an atmosphere which will not encourage foreigners to stay. The customers in front have an idea about what is going on in the back room, they can't help noticing some of the shouting and singing, and disapprove.
A visitor arrives for Alex, a blonde, middle-aged woman, with whom he seems to be very friendly. But there is another woman at the bar, a redhead, very much interested in the Alex: it turns out, she is called Christine, works at a building society and was sent to give Alex an application form for a larger flat, which he is to fill in and take personally to the office next morning. Alex asks the first woman not to come to the pub for a while, he would come and see her. The cook, a neo-Nazi of the skin-head type, gets quite envious about all these women interested in his boss.
On the next day Conni goes to see an aquaintance who works in the theater of the town. By chance, she meets a former colleague of her mother, who used to be a hairdresser at the theater. They have a vacancy and Eva should apply, Conni promises to give her mother the message. The man she is visiting is an electrician and responsible for the lighting at the theater. But he will lose his job, he tells her, because they are cutting down jobs and they have to keep a colleague, a foreigner, who has children, although everybody knows that he is no good at work and likes to be ill a lot. The young man has two dogs, which he likes very much and thinks of joining a dog-club, to get them properly trained. He invites Conni home but she refuses, saying "Perhaps next time".
When Alex closes his pub, he notices two observers and follows them in his car: They enter a police building! When he returns rather late, Eva again asks him to give up that horrible pub, before he becomes one the neo-nazis himself.
Next day, Alex goes to the building society, where Christine is a secretary. Her boss tells Alex bluntly that he doesn't approve of the political company in Alex's apparently notorious pub and that he isn't one for cutting corners as a favor anyway. But Christine is quite optimistic that Alex will get his flat after all.
In the evening, a protest march in sympathy for the killed Turkish shop owner and against neo-fascism takes place in the street of the pub, as it is well known that the neo-Nazis meet there. The normal customers in the front room have a heated discussion and it turns out that they are very much opposed to the neo-Nazis (one even leaves in protest), but that they can't agree with the protest march either: they do agree with some of the arguments of the right-wing but not their methods. They too think that there are too many foreigners let into the country, while many Germans are out of work, some of the guests in the pub included, and needing help themselves.
A fight breaks out between the marchers and the neo-Nazis and the police, who were going to do raids in various suspected right-wing places anyway, arrive on the scene. They search the pub for weapons, as they suspect Alex of dealing in weapons, and right wing material but find neither, as Alex secretly warns the people in the back room. A lot are arrested, among them the cook and Alex, because the police did find stolen mobile phones under the vegetables in the store-room.
During the questioning, Alex tells his story: after serving a prison sentence for stealing and selling impounded heroin, he started a restaurant in Frankfurt. The mafia tried to blackmail him into paying protection money, which he refused. The police did nothing to help him, when the mafia finally tried to kill him and destroyed the restaurant, the only ones helping him, actually saving his life, were a few right-wing skin-heads. That is how Alex got into the right-wing scene, moved with Eva to Darmstadt and took over "Burg Rheinfels". The police can't keep Alex and have to let him go in the end. The police leave the youngest of the neo-Nazi boys, Dieter. He is the the most scared and tells the police that Naumann is their big boss. Dieter promises to find out more about the organisation for the police and is let go.
Meanwhile, the raid in the quarry is quite successful: the police arrest a gang of young men practicing in the dark and find weapons stolen from an army depot. Naumann pretends that he has nothing to do with them and is just the horrified owner of the quarry. Another raid takes place in the dog club, where nothing much is found.
Eva is very worried when Alex doesn't come home and takes a taxi to the pub, where she finds traces of the fight. The taxi driver takes her back home again but Alex still isn't back. After being released by the police, he doesn't go home but visits the blonde woman from the pub! Only after this visit does Alex go back to Eva, who again begs him to give up the pub. On the next day, Naumann in the company of Christine goes to visit the dog club, where he keeps his own dog. Repair work is going on after the raid and it becomes soon clear, that this too is a neo-Nazi club. Alex is there helping with training the dogs; also present is a new member, the young electrician from the theater with his dog Boris. Naumann thinks that he will fit very nicely into his organisation.
A bit later, Dieter, the young boy, who was kept longest by the police, also turns up. Naumann talks him into helping with training the dogs by being the "bad guy", who is attacked by the dog, wearing a protective suit. Everybody gets scared, when Naumann choses his own dog, a particularly agressive one, to attack Dieter. Dieter is knocked down by the dog, which goes for his unprotected neck. Alex shoots the dog, but it is too late, Dieter is dead. Naumann is only devastated by the death of his dog, though, and hates Alex from this moment onwards.
In the next scene the blonde woman, whom Alex was seeing and who is called Frau Carstens, turns out to be with a department of the federal police. Alex calls her under the name of "Ackermann" and reports the incidence with the dog. Frau Carstens has already heard about this and is very annoyed: Alex Bronner is an undercover policeman, whose cover story has been built up for six years. Now he may have endangered the success of the whole plan by antagonising Naumann, who seems to be at the center of the neo-Nazi organisation. Alex is very disturbed by the idea, that he was supposed to quietly watch the boy die in order to keep up his cover identity.
Tödliche Wahl, 2
At the beginning of the second part, Conni gets an invitation, Eva really gets the job at the theater and is very happy and the electrician, Wolff, loses his job, as he was suspecting he would. He and his colleagues are very upset about this, as the other electrician, a foreigner, who can stay on because he has a family, is well known for being off "sick", whenever he wants to work on his house.
Conni goes to her bank to withdraw money and finds that the account, which apparently belonged to the ditched boyfriend, has been closed and she can’t get anything.
On this day is also the funeral of Dieter, the boy who was killed by Naumann’s dog. Naumann and the neo-Nazi group have come in full force and use the funeral for some pompous speeches. Alex has also come in spite of Eva’s protestations. Dieter’s mother doesn’t believe it was an accident and blames the group of leading Dieter astray. The parson tries to stop the the neo-Nazis from singing a song, which was very popular during the Third Reich as a lament for a dead comrade. After the funeral, even some members of the organization wonder about Dieter’s death, why Naumann used his own dog on somebody completely unexperienced with fighting dogs. They suggest that maybe a mysterious woman called "Die Katze," the cat, whom nobody seems to have actually seen yet, is behind it.
Alex calls Frau Karstens, who runs a second-hand-clothes shop as cover, because he wants to report some things to her. While he is on the way there, Conni enters the shop and inquires about conditions, if she wants to sell clothes. She sees Alex, when he arrives outside and Frau Karsten and he pretend to be close friends. Frau Karstens again tells Alex, how unwise it was to shoot the dog, as these right-wing people have a special feeling for their dogs. Conni manages to leave, without Alex seeing her.
Alex knows that he is being followed and watched. After leaving Frau Karstens‘ shop, he confronts his follower, who has been sent by Naumann, who doesn’t trust Alex anymore. Alex tells him, that Frau Karstens is his girlfriend and leaves the follower behind with a flat tire.
Conni uses Alex’s absence to visit her mother. They quarrel about Alex, who apprently threw Conni out (after raising her as his own) when she was seventeen and an extremely badly behaved teenager. Since then, Conni, who first got secretarial jobs, has finished school at night and now studies history at the university. During the conversation it comes out that she was not really paid the high salary because she was such a well qualified secretary, but because she was the mistress of her boss, who liked to take her along on business trips to the Middle East. This boss was involved in illegal weapon deals until he was arrested. Apparently Conni found another man afterwards to finance her but, understandably, he shut her account after being ditched. So Conni is short of money and wants to borrow some from her mother.
At this point Alex comes home. He changes into different clothes and tries to go off without meeting Conni but Eva asks him to say hello. Conni and he soon start a fight: Alex doesn’t want her to take her mother’s hard-earned savings. Conni retaliates by reminding him that he took Eva’s money, when he lost his job with the police and why doesn’t he marry her at last? She digs out some old accusations of Alex being a coward and opportunist and politically wishy-washy for running this lousy pub without really joining Naumann’s right wing organisation. She is full of nationalist talk, which takes her mother completely by surprise. Eva is horrified, because now her daughter also seems to sympathise with these circles, especially as Conni is hinting that she got her political views from men, she had affairs with. Nevertheless, Eva gives Conni her birthday present, a pendant and a lipstick with her monogram. But Conni does not take her Mother’s money after all, after the quarrel with Alex.
Although the pub is closed on this day, Alex goes to check on something, as there will be a big meeting of the neo-Nazis that night. He finds signs that the cook must be around somewhere and locks the cellar door to make sure he can have a word with him. The cook explains that he was just making sandwiches for some friends but Alex is not pleased, as the cook is using the pub’s stores for his private purposes.
Naumann and Christine, who seems to be his mistress, return together from the funeral. Naumann wants Christine to spy on Alex. Christine thinks this is not necessary, as Alex has always been dependable but Naumann insists: "One of us would never have shot the dog." He suspects Alex of being a police agent.
In his office Naumann finds a fax from Conni, saying that she won’t be able to come to the meeting that evening. Afterwards, Naumann rings Wolf, the young electrician, offers him a job and invites him to come to the meeting. Wolf is very glad about the job and also accepts the invitation. Naumann says that some of his new comrades will come to accompany him to the pub.
When Wolf puts the receiver down, the door bell rings and he finds Conni outside. Conni is rather scared of the dogs but he reassures her. As Wolf is in love with Conni, he is very pleased about this visit . Conni mentions the synagogue opposite Wolf’s flat and he tells her how he helped rebuild it. Conni thinks this is stupid; the young generation of Germans should stop feeling responsible for things that their parents and grandparents did. But Wolf replies that he feels he has an obligation; his grandfather and father are dead and can’t do anything anymore and they would surely have wanted to help with the synagogue: Wolf’s father was in a concentration camp for political reasons, and only survived because Jewish fellow-prisoners helped him.
But Wolf goes on to tell Conni how he feels frustrated by all the riffraff, that have come into Germany through the very easy controls on asylum seekers and by a lot of the foreigners being lazy and living at the cost of the Germans. He shows off all his computer equipment and some clever gadgets that he built. Conni is very interested and remarks that all this technology seems to be the same as is used for remote-control bombs. She is saved just in time from Wolf’s kisses by the arrival of his new comrades, who have come to take him along to the meeting.
Everybody seems to have a good time at the meeting. There is a lot of beer, and a speaker recounts the events at the funeral that morning. They decide that the parson who interrupted their song will have to be taught a lesson. Then Wolf is welcomed under great applause and officially made a member by "Gauleiter" Naumann.
While the comrades are busy, Alex discovers a secret tunnel starting in the storeroom of the pub. He just has time to close the door to the passage, when suddenly Christine turns up in his cellar and declares that she is lonely and feels like drinking a glass of wine with him at his bar. Which they do, having a very friendly conversation and afterwards Alex takes her home. Meanwhile a group of the neo-Nazis has gone to beat up the parson. When they later return they are greeted with applause.
Conni tries to reach somebody called "Abdul," whom she once met in Bagdad, by telephone but without success. Then she calls her mother, to tell her about Alex and the lady from the second-hand-shop; afterwards she has a bath. When the door bell rings, she ignores it but the person who rang has a key and lets himself in: it is Naumann, who was her former lover and who also bought the flat for her. He wants to know where she stands. He wants her back in his bed but also safely back inside his organisation. He has a feeling that she doesn’t pull her weight any more. It turns out that she was sent to investigate the possibility that Wolf might build a bomb for them to blow up the synagogue. She reports that the chances are not good, as Wolf is a friend of the Jews. The only way would be if she started an affair with him and then tried to persuade him. Naumann gets very annoyed about this suggestion.
Conni doesn’t want violence anyway; she wants to reach her aims by using political methods. But Naumann and his organisation have a rich Arab sponsor, who wants in return for his money three prominent Jews dead. If they can’t manage that by blowing up the synagogue, Naumann has to get his money somewhere else: he wants to rob a bank and Conni will have to be the driver to bind her more securely to him.
Alex and Christine part company. Alex has still to visit another lady in a second-hand-shop. Alex reports to Frau Karstens about the secret passage and Christine’s visit, whom he suspects to be Naumann’s spy and maybe also the mysterious "cat." Frau Karstens tells him about Conni’s visit in the shop and that she recognised her on old photos of Naumann as his mistress. All the time they are watched by Eva. When Alex finally arrives at home, Eva has left. He rings Conni, but she won’t tell him, where Eva might be. So Alex goes to the theater to wait for the end of the performance. But a colleague warns Eva.
Conni at last gets a call from Abdul and an invitation, but not just to make love to him; they also have business to discuss. Abdul is Naumann‘s rich Arab sponsor, he speaks German very well, because he studied in Germany and does a lot of business there. Conni tells him, how she has been forced by Naumann to take part in a bank robbery and that Naumann is nowadays only interested in his own power instead of thinking of his organisation. Also he gets more and more violent. Conni wants the organization in the long run to become a party that supports more nationalist aims than the existing ones, especially about immigration laws for foreigners, but inside the legal system, so that they could compete for seats in Parliament. That would mean no more neo-Nazi talk and definitely no bombs or bank robberies. Abdul also wants to sponsor a legal party which would support more liberal export laws, in particular for technology. He too disapproves of the violence, except for the three prominent Jews he wants to see dead. He insists on those, before he will give any money. He and Conni agree that Naumann is becoming a liability for their plans.
Eva calls Conni at home: she doesn't know any more, what to do. She still loves Alex; she won't give him up after seventeen years without giving him a chance to explain. Conni doesn't agree but tells her mother to do what she thinks right.
In order to find out where Eva is staying, Alex goes to see Conni in her flat. They quarrel again and now we hear why Alex really threw her out when she was still a teenager: Conni wanted to sleep with him at that time and wouldn't stop offering herself, so Alex insisted on her leaving before Eva learned about it. Alex now tells Conni that he is doing some illegal business on the side, as his income from the pub is not much. Frau Karstens from the second-hand shop is his partner in crime, and they pretend to have an affair to explain his visits to her clothes shop. The earnings from these dealings he has put into an account in Eva's name. Conni is to ring Eva and tell her this. Then Eva can decide herself what to do.
THat evening in the pub is a "Heimatabend" a special meeting with guests from right-wing organisations in other parts of Germany. There are pompous speeches again about Germany becoming a world power again and how they have to get rid of all foreign elements and those Germans who don't care enough about their own country and culture.
Alex is serving at the bar and it gets interesting, as all the women in his life turn up in the pub. Christine is already there, keeping him company at the bar. Then Frau Karstens swoops in, handing over an envelope with the commen "Holiday photos" and swoops out again, smiling sweetly at Christine, who is baffled. Then Conni arrives in the company of Abdul to take part in the Heimatabend. Naumann is not amused and Christine explains to Alex that Conni is Naumann's great love. Alex has a quick look at the photos, one of which shows a lipstick with a monogram that was found in the car used for the bank robbery.
Then Eva also turns up in the pub; she smiles and asks Alex for the keys of the flat. They will talk later, when Alex comes home.
The guests in the pub have a more and more heated discussion about Germany's place in Europe and the common European currency, while the crowd in the back room sing sentimental songs and drink a lot. Conni leaves again with Abdul, and Naumann's mood gets worse. Alex gets a glimpse of Conni's necklace, which bears the same monogram as the lipstick on Frau Karstens' photo.
Tödliche Wahl, 3
Alex Bronner and a colleague from the local police force watch the block of buildings to which Alex's pub belongs. They see several people, including Naumann, go in through a side entrance.
Meanwhile Eva is being followed on her way home from the theater; she is scared and starts to run. Then a patrol-like group of probably neo-Nazis appears and beats up her follower. She is no less scared after this happening and takes a taxi home. There she finds a note from Alex saying he has gone to the cinema but won't be late.
Naumann and his visitors are expecting Conni, who is late. There is not just a subterrenean meeting-room, but the headquarters of Naumann's organisation, with a guard room complete with weapons and a proper office with telephone exchange and fax machine. Naumann is going upstairs to call Conni on his mobile phone. The cook follows him, asking when Naumann will give him at last his own pub as a reward for his services.
Nothing much happens outside and Alex gets impatient. In spite of the warnings of his colleague, he enters the building to investigate and is almost seen by Naumann and the cook. Alex escapes but almost collides on the stairs with Conni, who has arrived with Abdul.
Alex goes round to his pub and pretends that he is repairing the fridge, when Naumann and the cook come in. They in turn pretend that they are preparing a birthday party. After Alex has gone, the cook tests the fridge: it really doesn't work. But Naumann is suspicious: the cook is told to have an eye on Alex; if he really is a traitor, a new pub manager will be needed for the "Burg Rheinfels!"
Once Conni and Abdul have arrived, the meeting can start. Conni is accused of not turning up at a meeting where she was supposed to be elected for an important post in the party. Then Abdul is introduced, but one of the others knows him already from before the Gulf War: the owner of a chemical plant, who did business with Abdul.
Alex goes straight from the pub to Frau Kramer's shop, where his fellow-watcher, Tschikowsky, called "Chico," is also there. They have a few words about Alex's leaving his post in order to investigate and Chico is worrying about how to completely surround this rabbit-warren in case the police want to go in and surprise the the neo-Nazis. Alex had reported that he didn't recognize the two people arriving, who almost caught him. After Alex has left, Chico concludes that Alex must be lying; he must have been able to see the people. On a photo that Frau Kramer shows him, he recognizes Conni. Frau Kramer explains that Conni is the daughter of the woman Alex lives with.
When Alex finally arrives at home he writes a note to Conni asking her to call him at the pub.
Naumann's meeting has now come to a serious subject: the future strategy. It is suggested by Naumann and his minions to have a right-wing but perfectly legal political party on the one hand and the present neo-Nazi organisation on the other hand, which would create the proper hostile atmosphere towards foreigners and commit crimes, if necessary. Conni completely disagrees; she argues that the party would always get connected with the organization and the crimes or violence committed by them would mean that normal citizens would never vote for the party. She reminds them of the left movement and how they were dragged into illegality by supporting the Red Army. She tells everybody how Naumann forced her to take part in the robbery and how he used dogs to commit murder.
Abdul gets up and supports Conni's argument against violence; he declares that he can only be interested in a legal party with chances at the next election, because he ultimately wants a government which is pro-Arab instead of pro-Israel. Still, he insists on his condition for giving them money: he wants three prominent Jews dead. One of Naumann's group remarks that this is rather contradictory; he would call killing the Jews terroism all right. Abdul gets very annoyed and explains that the Arab fight against the Jews is a war and so his actions could certainly not be compared to Naumann's despicable behaviour. After this Conni and Abdul leave.
Eva is still awake when Alex comes to bed. She is worried and can't believe the story about Fr. Kramer and the illegal business after all. She asks Alex to tell her a story that she can believe. Now, at last, Alex tells her the real story: that he is still with the police as an undercover agent, that a lot of the happenings of the last six years were orchestrated by the police to give him a convincing cover, that all the money on the account in Eva's name is his accumulated salary. Eva gets very sad, as she was kept out of greater parts of Alex's life in all that time . Alex reasons that she would have been worried to death had she known everything. Eva is, of course, worried anyway and he assures her that his colleagues have an eye on him all the time.
Naumann is drunk since the meeting went wrong and more then ever obsessed with proving that Alex is an agent.
Fr. Kramer and Alex meet somewhere in a forest. She confronts him with evidence about Conni and that he must have recognized her that night on the staircase. She asks him,whether he can stay loyal under these circumstances and recommends that he get out and stops working for the police on this project. Alex admits that he recognized Conni but insists that he will be able to work properly and will continue. Fr. Kramer again warns him that both their careers will be over if he proves to be unreliable.
At the dog club, Naumann gives Wolf the job of watching the synagogue; he wants to know who of their organisation will enter the building and Wolf has to film this person with a video camera from the window in his flat. Wolf gladly agrees to do this; he is very grateful to Naumann for giving him work.
Alex, who is also at the dog club, gets a call from his cook, who wants him to come and help with the work; also Christine is waiting for him at the bar. Alex in the end takes Christine home, but declares that he won't come up to her flat, that last time didn't mean anything, he won't cheat on Eva. Christine is sad and tells him, that she likes him very much, but they part on friendly terms. She warns Alex again of Naumann before she leaves.
Naumann visits Conni, who is about to go out to the university. He is still very annoyed about the meeting and threatens her with his dogs if she doesn't cooperate, and hints at some explosion that is going to take place soon. Conni says she is going to leave his organisation unless he gives up terrorism and they all join a proper legal party. After Naumann has gone, Conni rings Abdul; she is scared something terrible will happen. Abdul tells her to play for time and try to find out more.
Then Alex arrives. He wants to help Conni in exchange for information about Naumann and the oragnisation. Conni is hostile to start with; she can't imagine how she could possibly need help from Alex. She soon realizes that Alex is still with the police. He tells Conni that he hasn't told his colleagues everything he knows about her, otherwise she would have been arrested for the robbery. Conni begins to soften and asks why he is doing this. Alex explains that he wants to keep harm away from Eva, but also that he maybe understands now a bit more about Conni. He wants her to get out of the organisation immediately and tell the police everything she knows about Naumann and his comrades.
Conni replies that they are her comrades too, that she can't become a traitor, and anyway she believes in a renewal of nationalist ideas. Alex tries to remind her where all this talk came from, about loyalty to the cause and the comrades being more important than the life of an individual. And that in reality, dying for the cause or just going to prison for a long time might be much less nice than talking about it. Conni says that she and a lot of her generation are just sick of Germans being automatically the bad guys everywhere and that they had a right of thinking German just as the French have a right of thinking French. Alex replies that that is quite all right, but that Naumann and his hooligans wouldn't stop there, that they wouldn't be content until the whole world also think German.
At last Conni agrees to stay away from Naumann and his meetings and not to tell them about Alex's identity, but she won't testify against her comrades. Alex takes her necklace, as it has the same monogram as the lipstick that was found after the robbery. He will try to keep her name out of things for Eva's sake. Then Alex says that his cook mentioned something about a bomb that is going to explode; does Conni know any details? In order to find out, Conni rings Naumann and pretends to give in and accept his conditions. He tells her that a time-bomb is already in place in the synagogue and will explode at 16:00 o'clock.
Alex runs off to try and prevent this. Conni remembers that Wolf lives opposite the synagogue and goes to see him. Conni immediately notices the camera, and Wolf tells her that Naumann asked him to watch who is entering the synagogue. Conni seduces Wolf and turns the video camera away from the window before Alex enters the synagogue.
Alex searches the synagogue and finds a suspicious bag but it is too late to call the police, so he has to try and defuse the bomb himself. He does so expertly and finds nothing! He calls the police anonymously and disappears.
Meanwhile Conni realizes that it is 4 p.m. and no bomb has exploded. She leaves a puzzled and annoyed Wolf rather abruptly. A short time later, two comrades arrive to take Wolf and his tape to Naumann.
Alex calls Frau Kramer out of a meeting and tells her about the false bomb and that he has to disappear for a while. Frau Kramer agrees that Naumann knows now that Alex is a police agent. She releases him from his duties in their project and tells him to stay way from all further police action against Naumann and his neo-Nazis. If Conni wasn't knowingly Naumann's accomplice in setting the trap, she is also in great danger, because Naumann now knows that she has turned against him.
Alex has no intention of staying away from the action. He meets Conni in a student pub to tell her that the bomb story was a trap, and she tells him about Wolf's job and that she turned the camera around.
Meanwhile, Naumann and an expectant audience sit in front of the TV. He wants to demonstrate that Alex is the traitor among them, by showing that he acted on the wrong information about the bomb that Naumann gave him via Conni. The video turns out to show something completely different and Naumann is fuming with rage. When he sees that Conni was in Wolf's flat, he has no doubt that Alex is the traitor and Conni is helping him now. And Wolf will have to prove that he is a trustworthy comrade after all.
When Eva comes home after work, she finds Alex packing. He explains that he has to disappear for a while and will go to a little hotel. Despite her pleading, he doesn't give her an address but says he will call her. For emergencies, he gives her Frau Kramer's telephone number. He promises that this will be his last case.
Naumann tries to find out from Christine where Alex is, but she doesn't know and tells Naumann once more that she thinks Alex is dependable.
Conni gets home and finds Wolf and his dog waiting for her; Naumann has given him the keys. Wolf has disconnected the telephone. He is drunk and wants to sleep with her and threatens her with the dog. Conni manages to convince him that she will voluntarily sleep with him, if he sends the dog to the other room.
Frau Kramer and Tschikowski are informed about an emergency call that arrived at a local police station from Conni's flat. When the police arrive, they first have to shoot Wolf's dog that immediately attacks one of the policemen. They find Conni in shock and Wolf dead.
Alex is killing time in his hotel room when he gets a call from Frau Kramer, who tells him that Conni is in the hospital and what happened: Wolf threatened her with the dog, she managed to get rid of the dog and then killed Wolf. Frau Kramer again asks Alex to leave and stay away until the action against Naumann is over. Alex refuses to leave until he knows that Conni is safe. Frau Kramer replies that she is perfectly safe: as soon as she gets out of hospital she will be arrested for taking part in the robbery.
Alex does not leave, but goes back to his flat to get his weapon from a hiding place. He tells Eva about Conni and that he won't use the weapon, he just needs it for safety reasons as he is going to talk to somebody about what happened to Conni. When he has left, Eva in desperation calls Frau Kramer and tells her what Alex is going to do. Frau Kramer pretends not to know what Eva is talking about but as soon as the telephone is free again, she calls Tschikowski: the police are planning a raid of Naumann's headquarters in the cellar and Alex is probably on his way there. He may upset the plans of the police, so they decide to strike earlier than planned, as soon as possible.
Alex storms into the cellar and arrives in the middle of a meeting. He sends everybody except Naumann out and forces Naumann to shoot several times into the wall, in order to pretend a fight has taken place. Then he shoots Naumann: two shots into his legs, for the Turkish shop owner and young Dieter and then a shot into his heart, for what he did to Conni.
When Alex tries to get out he meets the police on the stairs, who have started their raid. They take him for one of the neo-Nazis and shoot him.
Conni is released from the hospital and arrested by the police.
Alex is flown by helicopter to a hospital, the neo-Nazis are arrested and Tschikowski and his colleagues search the cellar. They find the bullet holes in the walls of Naumann's meeting room and think that they are somewhat high to be consistent with a fight between two men who know about shooting. Alex will have to explain something if he survives, although they agree that Naumann was a swine.
Tschikowski goes to interview Conni in prison. She refuses to talk unless she can speak to Alex first. When Tschikowski asks her why, she says she knows, Alex still works for them and beside, he is her father and will help her. Tschikowski agrees, that Alex would probably help her if he could but that he got shot in the raid. Conni is devastated and promises to tell all she knows about Naumann and his organization, when she has recovered a bit.
Eva has gone to the hospital, where Alex is in the intensive care unit. He is in a coma but the surgeon tells Eva, that he is stable after the operation and that she should come as often as possible to talk to Alex; that would be the best way of calling him back to life.