SUMMARY OF CHAPTER ONE TO SIXTEEN
Haim Altman, a former war correspondent in his forties, writes to his daughter, who lives with her mother in London. He hasn’t seen her much in the last 5 years. She is now about 8 years old and Haim has a lot to tell. His ID has expired, he’s broke, his apartment is a ruin, and a shady guy he owes money to is tightening the noose around his neck. But these difficulties don’t even seem to bother Haim the most. Why does he write to his daughter as if she were an adult, as if she could understand the tribulations of a middle-aged man? Why is he writing to her future self, why is he planning for her to find his writings “when the time is right”?
Dan, a doctor friend, offered Haim a free check-up before he left on a long trip to Bali. A week after his friend’s departure, Haim learned that he would soon die of a terminal illness. He asks Yaara, a good friend, to keep the letters and give them to his daughter “when the time is right.” Things turn from terrible to worse: a falling Buddha sculpture kills the art collector who came to Haim’s place to claim it as his property.
Haim wants to call for rescue. But his neighbors decide to visit and cheer him up. Since he can’t contain the neighbors‘ enthusiasm, he hides the body behind his sofa. When the body is discovered, Haim finds himself at a loss for explanations. Surprisingly, no one is willing to call the emergency services or the police – and everyone has their own personal reasons.
In the morning Haim leaves for Meudon to tell Mrs. Virginie de Volland about the passing of her husband. But she seems to know all about it, and rolls over him, literally. Eventually she drives him home, forces her way into his apartment, and Haim discovers that Alard’s body is no longer there. An Indian man who introduces himself as Arjun Mittal calls Haim and asks for a meeting at Père Lachaise. Haim accepts. Mittal is a representative of a secretive yacht club. He proposes to hire Haim for big money. The purpose of the club is to turn people with very short life expectancy into killers of high-profile „monsters“, i.e. dictators, mafiosi and even simple murderers.
Mittal recruits Haim to the club and tells him to wait in Le Havre for his new ID. They cross the Channel on their way to Exeter, where a private plane is waiting to take them to Mexico. Mittal uses the channel crossing to give Haim a detailed shooting lesson. But when they reach the British coast, Haim decides to escape and visit his daughter Avi in London one last time. He locks up the nanny and goes out on the town with Avi for an evening. When he takes her to school in the morning, he narrowly avoids arrest with Mittal’s help.
A few hours later they are on their flight to Mexico. Disregarding Mittal’s advice, Haim gets himself into trouble and is kidnapped shortly after arrival in Mexico City. But his designated clubmate Nono, an 80-year-old philosophy professor, manages to free him.
Nono’s target is Casal, the brutal head of a Mexican cartel, and Nono needs Haim’s help. After the successful hit on Casals‘ convoy, Haim is on the run. In a bout to escape the bonds of his suicide club, he agrees to drive a truck across the border into Texas. He gets arrested and ends up back in Mexico, in the hands of Casal, the cartel boss who survived Nono’s hit. Nono is his prisoner, as is Haim, but with Mittal’s help, Haim manages to end Casal’s rule once and for all.
As he and Mittal prepare to leave on another mission, Haim stumbles upon the dead art collector, who isn’t actually dead but is hiding in Mexico with a new lover. They drug him and fly him back to Paris with his boxer girlfriend to prove Haim’s innocence. Meanwhile, a letter from Bali has arrived at Haim’s address. It’s from his friend Dan, the doctor: The diagnosis Haim received was sent to him in error. It appears that Haim is completely healthy.
But Mittal and the club don’t know anything about it. And before Haim could make up his mind whether he should tell them, they announce that they secured a good position in the journalistic milieu for him, which will give him access to important events. Haim reads about the club’s first successes. Two attacks (one of which involved Haim) have occurred in the last few days. Both have been signed with “No. The Cleaners”. What is Haim to do? Overwhelmed by his newfound life expectancy, he pushes aside his obligation to the club and celebrates into the night with his housemates. It becomes clear how Alard came to disappear from the house. And it becomes clear that Virginie, Alard’s wife, is far from forgetting Haim. When Haim goes to the passport office to pick up his ID the next day, he’s arrested on suspicion of murder.
During the interrogation, Haim gets into a philosophical conflict with the inspector about the nature of morality. He ends up in a cell with three Arabic-speaking inmates who forbid him, if not breathing, then any independent movement. Haim falls asleep overtired and wakes up just when the lights are going out and everyone goes to sleep. In order to get through the night, he decides to take a book from his cellmates and hides in the toilet corner, where an emergency light makes it possible to read. When he reaches the toilet with the book and the light comes on, it turns out to be a bilingual edition of the Koran. The book’s owner wakes up, accuses Haim of theft and beats him with a self-made razor. The book falls into the toilet bowl, whereupon the other two wake up and the three inmates beat Haim to pulp. The whole prison becomes agitated, which leads to Haim, who has now been knocked unconscious, being found by the guards.
Haim wakes up in the hospital almost a week later. He has suffered several fractures and has a lengthy convalescence ahead of him. The riots in the prison have spread into town. And the threat of returning to prison causes Haim to flee the hospital. He hopes for help from his friend Yaara. He takes the night bus to Yaara’s place in the hope to catch her at home. He’s soaked when he finally gets to ring the doorbell at 2am – in vain. He decides to find a brothel in order to spend the night in an anonymous and cosy place. But the cab driver will not take him anywhere near such an establishment. A garçon of a bar that’s just about to close recognizes Haim as the man who started the recent riots by dropping the Koran in the loo. He calls him a folk hero and is very happy to point him to a very special place, a club d’échangistes, fronting the cities oldest business. Haim ends up with Emy, a girl working at the club. She makes him take drugs in order to alleviate his pain. They end up in her tiny studio, where Haim falls asleep on the sofa.
He wakes up around noon. Emy is still sleeping. Her little dog needs a walk. Haim takes him out in search for some croissants. Instead of finding a bakery, he crosses paths with Yaara. Haim says he needs help. They agree that he will come see her later in the day. When he get’s back to Emy’s, he finds her fast asleep. He writes a letter to his daughter, telling her about purpose and determination, a lesson he claims having learned from Nono. His broken ribs have started to hurt again. He finds drugs in Emy’s bathroom, and helps himself. Someone tries to enter the apartment with a key. Fearing that Emy might have overdosed, Haim doesn’t dare to open. After an unsuccessful attempt to wake Emy up, he grabs her dog and makes his way out of the building. To his surprise, Mittal is waiting for him on the sidewalk. He tries to make Haim understand that the club can not afford deserters. But Haim does not take Mittal’s threats seriously. Their discussion ends on a subway platform, when a stranger attempts to push Haim in front of an incoming train. Thanks to Emy’s dog and Haim’s somnambulistic reaction, the stranger and Mittal end up on the track instead of him. The stranger escapes, the dog disappears, and Haim saves Mittal. That buys him a last chance to prove his loyalty. He reaches Yaara’s place early and tells her about the diagnosis blunder and the club. Yaara can’t conceal her emotions, something she usually excels at.
Yaara leaves the apartment under the pretext of having some urgent shopping to do. She forgets her phone and misses a phone call. Haim notices the name of the caller: „AMY“. Yaara comes back, picks up her phone and disappears again. Haim goes through the drawers in search of a painkiller, but finds a gun instead. He goes through his options and remembers his father’s advice to take out the leaders. He decides to ask Mittal to let him go. When Yaara comes back, she hands him painkillers and lets him “call his daughter on her phone” – the pretext Haim uses in order to get her phone. As he dials Mittal’s number, he realizes that AMY is him. And he understands that Yaara must have been the one to send the club after him, that she is basically his main handler. But Yaara surprises him again, this time by asking him for intimacy. Haim and Yaara end up having sex. Fired up by the positive turn of events, Haim starts to identify with the role that Yaara had chosen for him.
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