Babylon Berlin

It is early in the morning of 28 April 1929, and a freight train carrying pesticide is rolling westward from the factories of the young Soviet Union. A tank wagon has been hooked onto it and two criminals take the places of the train driver and stoker.

At the Soviet embassy, the singer Lukasz Nikoros meanwhile denounces the "Red Fortress" and its leader Kardakow.

In the morning, Kardakow emerges naked from the Landwehrkanal. While attempting to steal a vagrant's coat, he is seriously injured with a knife. Pursued by the "Schupo," he saves himself with a leap onto a coal hauler. Supplied with clothing by the captain, Kardakow invents a pretext which he uses to convince the janitor of Svetlana's building to let him there; the apartment, however, is empty.

May 1st, Boris Wolkow's body is floating lifelessly in the Landwehrkanal. Rath and Wolter have been assigned to prevent a demo at the Kottbusser Tor. However, the police are in for another surprise instead: they are sent to search for arms in the homes of the communists.

When Kardakow wakes up in Svetlana's bed, he sees Fallin and Selinsky out on the street approaching the house. He wants to warn his girlfriend, but she comes to him disguised as Lukasz Nikoros and opens the door for the men. Kardakow instantly realizes that she has betrayed him, and flees down the servants' staircase, but is unable to flee from his pursuers.

The journalist Katelbach wakes up Rath with the request to supply him with details about the injured police officer Dörr. What he fails to notice is that the landlady Elisabeth Behnke is hiding under Rath's bedclothes, having spent the night with him.

In a lecture at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-University, Dr. Schmidt presents his experiences in the treatment of war tremor, but is shouted down and accused of being a defeatist and a Jew.

While Irmgard Benda goes on a trip with her children, Nyssen is instructed by his aide Wegener for his interrogation by the examining magistrate. But before, the men are taken to councillor Benda, where Nyssen isn't spared running the gauntlet of the assembled journalists. Nyssen claims in vain that by mistake he had not been delivered the ordered pesticide.