On the outskirts of Braunschweig, a man in a dark suit climbs out of an SUV, behind him the sharp blades of a NATO wire gleam in the afternoon sun.
Moritz Kudalla passes a turnstile, enters a low-rise building, nods to the security guard through a pane of bulletproof glass and puts his hand in a small black box on the wall.
The box scans his fingerprints.
Kudalla opens a heavy steel door, goes down stairs, walks towards a gray, four-story block with small windows, opens further steel doors, passes further security gates, holds his hand to further scanners.
Nobody can be seen, nobody can be heard, only the muffled hum of machines.
On the third floor, Kudalla gets off an elevator and opens a door.
“We're there,” he says.
The room behind the door looks like the spaceship in Stanley Kubrick's film classic "2001: A Space Odyssey", wide, white and sterile.