Harter Brocken: Der Geheimcode (2019)

Small-town police officer Koops is conducting a routine speed check on a country road in the Harz when an oncoming car suddenly veers off the road for no apparent reason. Koops rushes to the scene, but he cannot help the driver. As he is dying, the man hands the officer an envelope. When Koops opens it at the station, he finds two photographs and the first part of a secret code inside. To solve this strange case, Koops first goes to the man’s last place of work; he has identified him as Simon Schürer. Schürer had worked for a major pharmaceutical company and wanted to spend a few days at his holiday home in the Harz. There Koops unexpectedly runs into his colleague Mette Vogt from Braunlage, who is there to investigate a burglary. Back at the station, a woman named Claudia Böhm turns up and says Schürer hired her as a bodyguard. Since the man had already paid her, she wants to help Koops investigate her client’s death, which both of them suspect was no ordinary accident. Their suspicions are strengthened when Koops and Böhm are suddenly shot at, and it becomes clear that a professional killer is at work. The next day, Koops meets Maria Joseph, who comes forward to see him just as Böhm did. She shows him a letter like the one Schürer gave Koops. Her letter contains the second part of the code. A third part of the secret code was supposed to have been given to Annett Kruse, so that all three could jointly decide what to do with the sender’s discovery. Shortly before his death, the sender had handed the letters to his notary, who sent them to the three recipients. The three, who did not know one another, were supposed to meet here in the Harz to decipher the riddle and then make a decision—that was the scientist’s instruction. He had been murdered four days earlier. Koops can no longer ask the notary about it, because he too has since been murdered. Together with Joseph, Koops sets out to find Annett Kruse, whom he thinks will be at the hotel in St. Andreasberg, but she is not there. Nevertheless, the two manage to get closer to solving the riddle. The letter’s sender had managed to develop a very effective cancer drug; but because producing it also posed dangers, he was unsure whether he should make his discovery public. That is why three independent people—the scientist Schürer, philosophy professor Maria Joseph, and Annett Kruse—were to advise on whether his formula should be put to use. For Maria Joseph, who herself has incurable cancer, it is clear that using the formula cannot be justified. The conduct of the pharmaceutical conglomerate the discoverer worked for, and which legally owns the formula, would ultimately harm more people than the drug could help. Claudia Böhm reveals that she is an agent of the pharmaceutical company, which wants the formula at any cost, but she is killed during an initial direct confrontation with Koops and the killer. The killer then uses Annett Kruse’s life as leverage to obtain the formula and summons Koops to meet him. Koops sets off with Maria Joseph for a remote complex of buildings where the killer is waiting for them. When Joseph hands him the envelope containing the formula, she throws herself out of the window with the killer. He is not prepared for this and cannot react in time. Both die, and the philosopher’s early death has thus acquired meaning for her. Koops frees Kruse and learns that her son, who has cancer, took part in a clinical trial, which is why her opinion should also count. But she too believes the formula is dangerous and should therefore not be put into use. Koops, however, thinks the people who died should not have died for nothing, and publishes the formula online, accessible to everyone around the world.