The unsuccessful inventor Leo Bergert is the awkwardness in person: Everything he tackles goes wrong. His latest project, the development of a totally new fuel goes, clearly failed. Now he is deeply in debt, and the bank will immediately return their money. As also leaves him his Dauerverlobte and also the rich Erbtante nothing rausrückt, he sees only one way out: Suicide. But even while he proves to be a failure: All attempts to convey himself to death, miscarry. He hires a hitman to kill him. But then his situation improves suddenly, he wants to live and make the job undone. But that turns out to be not so easy.
When another dead elderly gentleman is fished out of the Thames, Inspector David Perkins is convinced that the gorilla gang is active again. On a doll found with the body, characters of an African language are discovered. Together with Sergeant Pepper and language specialist Susan MacPherson, the search for the head of the gang begins.
East Berlin, shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Kurt Schröder and his family dig a tunnel to escape to West Berlin as they struggle to overcome the obstacles blocking their underground path to freedom.