Chapter 4: the groundbreaking interview
The smell of cut grass and damp earth was a welcome shock after the sterile perfume of boardrooms. Vanja stood on the touchline of the Allianz Arena pitch, two hours before the grounds crew would begin their final pre-match ritual. The stadium was a silent, towering bowl of empty seats, the morning light filtering through the translucent facade and painting the pristine turf in strips of cool white and shadow. Peter Sauer, the head groundsman for thirty-four years, had hands like knotted roots and eyes the color of a winter sky. He spoke not in sentences, but in a low, continuous rumble about soil pH, hybrid Bermuda grasses, and the precise weight of a roller.
“The pitch is the first player,” Vanja said, her voice soft, her recorder held loosely between them. “And the last witness. It holds the imprint of every tackle, every victory, every failure. It’s the only constant.”
Peter stopped his examination of a divot near the center circle and looked at her, really looked at her. Most journalists asked about fertilizer or drainage. “You’re not here for the grass,” he stated.
“I’m here for the memory it holds,” she corrected. “The pitch Franz Beckenbauer floated over. The spot where Rummenigge scored his last goal for the club. Where Oliver Kahn roared. Where Japp Heynckes paced. It’s all still here, in the soil, isn’t it?”
A slow, almost imperceptible smile cracked his weathered face. He bent down, pinched a blade of grass, and offered it to her. “It remembers everything. Even the tears. Especially the tears.”
For the next hour, he showed her the underground heating system, the sub-air vacuum that could suck a monsoon dry in minutes, the sacred shed where the mowers were kept sharper than surgical tools. He spoke of players as forces of nature: “Müller? Like a terrier. Digs up the turf with his turns. Lewandowski? A stiletto. Precise, clean cuts. Robben? That left foot carved a trench over the years.” Vanja listened, her questions sparse, her understanding deep. She saw the club not as a brand, but as a living ecosystem, and this man its silent, essential keeper.
Her published piece on Peter Sauer ran two days later. It was a portrait of devotion, a love letter to the unseeable foundation of glory. It was human, humble, and profoundly respectful. The reaction within the Säbener Straße was one of stunned appreciation. Uli Hoeneß called Karl-Heinz, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. “She saw it. The soul of the place. Through the dirt.”
“I told you she wasn’t a lapdog,” Karl-Heinz replied, staring at the article on his tablet. A strange pride, complex and uncomfortable, swelled in his chest. She was dismantling his fortress, brick by brick, with reverence.
The invitation to dinner was Uli’s idea. “At the Käfer in the stadium. After the Gladbach match. Me, you, her. No agendas. Just dinner.”
Karl-Heinz knew it was a lie. Everything with Uli had an agenda.
The VIP box was a bubble of muted opulence, the nervous energy of the match below translated up here into the clink of crystal and the murmur of analysis. Bayern won 2-0, a clinical, unspectacular victory. Vanja watched, not from the box with the directors, but from the press tribune, her notebook open, her eyes missing nothing. She wore a tailored navy trouser suit, her hair pulled back severely. Professional armor.
She joined them in the private dining room after the crowds had dissipated. The room was all dark wood and soft leather, the pitch below now a void of perfect black, framed by the glowing rim of the stadium. Uli enveloped her in a bear hug, smelling of cigar smoke and eau de cologne. “The groundsman! Genius! Who thinks of the groundsman?”
“Someone who understands foundations,” Karl-Heinz said, pouring a glass of Riesling for her. Their fingers brushed during the exchange. A current, live and familiar, passed between them.
Dinner was a performance. Uli held court, telling stories of the 70s, of wild nights, of transfers pulled from the fire. Vanja listened, laughed in the right places, asked piercing questions that steered his anecdotes into revealing psychological territory. She was brilliant. Charming. Impregnable. Karl-Heinz watched her, this woman who had screamed his name into the firelight of a hunting lodge, now dissecting the club’s id with a surgeon’s calm. The dissonance was maddening.
When Uli excused himself to take a call, the silence that settled was thick and potent.
“You’ve conquered the kingdom from the grass up,” Karl-Heinz said, swirling his wine.
“It’s not a conquest. It’s an excavation.” She met his gaze. “Peter showed me the memorial.”
He knew what she meant. A small, discreet plaque near the players’ tunnel, listing the names of club employees who had died. Groundskeepers, laundry women, cooks.
“You looked for the heart,” he said, his voice low. “And you found it in the people we never see.”
“It’s always in the people you never see,” she replied, holding his stare. The unspoken words hung between them: I see you. Even when you wish I didn’t.
Uli returned, boisterous, declaring the evening a triumph. He insisted his driver take Vanja home. Karl-Heinz walked them to the elevator, a polite facade. As the doors began to close on Uli’s hearty goodbye, Vanja’s eyes locked on Karl-Heinz. Her gaze dropped deliberately to his mouth, then back up. Then the steel doors severed the connection.
He stood there for a full minute, the ghost of that look burning into him. He told his own driver to leave. He needed the walk to his office. The administrative wing was deserted, silent. But when he entered his office, the lights were already on.
She was standing by his desk, her jacket off, her silk blouse untucked. She must have doubled back, used the service stairs.
“You dismissed your driver,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“You told yours to wait at the south gate,” he countered, closing the door. The lock engaged with a solid, final click.
“I did.”
They faced each other across the expanse of polished oak, the site of their last brutal encounter. The memory of the gag, of her bent form, of his own ruthless fury, vibrated in the space between them.
“No gag tonight,” he said, his voice rough.
“No,” she agreed. She walked around the desk, not to him, but to the window, looking out at the dark pitch. “I wanted to see it from here. After seeing it from the ground. The perspective of god.”
He came up behind her, close enough that he could smell the citrus of her shampoo, the faint, clean sweat from the packed press tribune. He didn’t touch her. “And?”
“It’s just a field. A perfect, beautiful, empty field. You build cathedrals around it. You sell dreams based on it. But it’s just grass and dirt.” She turned to face him. “Like we’re just flesh and blood.”
Then her hands were on his belt, her movements efficient, unhesitating. She unbuckled it, yanked it free with a sharp hiss of leather. She unbuttoned his trousers, pushed them and his briefs down over his hips. His cock, already hard and heavy, sprang free. He made no move to help or hinder her, his hands clenched at his sides, just as they had been at the pool.
But this was different.
She didn’t kneel. She turned back to the window, placing her palms flat on the cool glass. She looked out at the darkened stadium, at the ghost of the pitch below. “Do it,” she said, her voice clear, a command and an invitation. “Right here. Where you see everything. Where everyone sees you.”
He understood. This was her script. Her reclamation. She was offering herself, but on her terms—not bent over his desk in subjugation, but presented against the symbol of his life’s work, a willing icon against the glass. The power was shared, fluid.
He stepped forward, his body pressing against hers. He pushed her tailored trousers and underwear down to her knees. He was painfully hard, the tip of his cock nudging against the seam of her ass. He reached around her, his hand sliding down her stomach, through the soft hair, into the wet heat between her legs. She was soaked. A low moan escaped her as his fingers found her clit, circling roughly.
“You’re fucking drenched,” he growled into her ear. “All through that polite dinner, you were thinking of this.”
“Yes,” she gasped, pushing back against him.
He guided himself to her entrance. He didn’t tease. He drove into her in one deep, claiming thrust, filling her utterly. The impact forced a sharp cry from her lips, which fogged the glass in front of her. He held there, buried to the hilt, both of them panting, staring out at the void.
Then he began to move. It was not the frantic, punishing pace of before. It was slower, deeper, more deliberate. Each withdrawal was almost complete, each penetration a full, shocking re-occupation. The sound was obscenely loud in the silent office: the wet, rhythmic slap of skin, their mingled grunts, the faint creak of the window against their weight.
“This is your cathedral,” she panted, her forehead now against the glass. “And you’re fucking me in it.”
Her words, filthy and profound, undid him. One hand gripped her hip, the other tangled in her hair, pulling her head back to arch her spine. He fucked her harder, faster, losing the measured rhythm. His balls tightened, slapping against her. He was close.
“Look down,” he commanded, his voice guttural. “Look at the pitch. Imagine it full. Eighty thousand people. And you’re up here, getting railed against the glass.”
The image, the sheer audacity of it, triggered her climax. She came with a shattered cry, her body clamping around him in violent, fluttering waves. The sensation tore his own orgasm from him. He slammed into her one final time, a brutal, deep thrust, and roared as he emptied himself inside her, pulse after hot, endless pulse.
They slumped against the glass, spent, held up by the window and each other. Their breathing gradually slowed. The stadium outside remained a silent, dark witness.
Slowly, he withdrew. She winced at the sensation, a mix of emptiness and sore fulfillment. He righted his clothes with unsteady hands. She pulled up her trousers, not bothering with the underwear she left in a damp pile on the floor.
She turned to face him, her face flushed, her lips swollen. She reached out and smoothed his hair, a strangely tender gesture. “The interview with Thomas Müller is Tuesday,” she said, her voice hoarse but steady. “I’ll need access to the video archive of the 2013 treble season.”
He blinked, the shift from raw sex to professional logistics dizzying. This was her, always holding both worlds. “I’ll arrange it.”
She nodded, picked up her jacket, and walked to the door. She unlocked it and paused, looking back at him. He stood by the window, silhouetted against the night, the ghost of their union already cooling on the glass behind him.
“Goodnight, Karl-Heinz,” she said.
“Goodnight, Vanja.”
She left, her footsteps fading down the hall. He didn’t move for a long time. The pitch below remained a mystery, a blank slate. But he felt, for the first time, that someone else could see its true shape, its weight, its memory. And that someone saw him, too—not just the legend or the director, but the man who fucked and feared and needed in equal, desperate measure. The game was no longer about winning. It was about survival, and who would walk away from the wreckage whole.
It was about survival, and who would walk from the wreckage whole.
The whisper of that night against the glass lingered for days, a phantom sensation Karl-Heinz carried into every meeting. Vanja, true to her word, submitted her request for the treble season archives. She also submitted her finalized interview schedule. Jupp Heynckes’ name was conspicuously absent.
Daniel Albrecht, Karl-Heinz’s perpetually aggrieved head of communications, stormed into his office without knocking on Tuesday morning. “She is refusing to interview Jupp Heynckes,” he stated, slapping a printout of Vanja’s schedule on the desk. “That’s unreasonable. She’s interviewing Müller today. She interviewed the fucking groundsman, but not Japp bloody Heyneckes? This is a deliberate slight.”
Karl-Heinz leaned back, steepling his fingers. He had seen the schedule. He’d been waiting for this. “I will talk to her.”
He did so indirectly, first. He observed from the tinted window of a media suite overlooking Interview Room Three. Thomas Müller was in mid-flow, his arms animated, his famous grin flashing. Vanja sat opposite him, a study in focused calm. She wore a simple black dress, her hair down. She was professional, her questions sharp and informed, but she smiled just enough, leaned forward just enough, to make the player feel fascinating, unique.
Müller, charmed, was practically preening. “You should post your pictures with these interviews,” he laughed, gesturing to her. “Or do TV. You’d sell millions.”
She gave a low, gracious laugh. “The words are supposed to be the story, Thomas. But thank you.”
Karl-Heinz watched the easy exchange, the casual flirtation that was just another tool in her kit. A familiar, acidic jealousy coiled in his gut. It wasn’t about Müller. It was about her control, the seamless way she compartmentalized. The woman who had taken him against the window was here, utterly contained.
He met her in the hall after Müller bounded away. “Miss Vrantz. A word in my office. It’s regarding your interview schedule.”
Her eyes met his, cool and unreadable. “Of course.”
She followed him, the click of her heels on the marble a measured counterpoint to his own stride. He closed the office door. The memory of where they had stood days before was a live wire in the room.
“Jupp,” he said, not sitting.
“Is not available,” she replied, remaining standing.
“He is. He’s agreed. He’s waiting for a date. You’ve listed every living legend except him. Explain.”
“I don’t have to.”
“You do if you want continued access to this club.”
Her composure didn’t crack, but something hardened behind her eyes. “My reasons are personal.”
“This isn’t personal. This is a commission. Your ‘personal reasons’ are professional obstructions.” His voice rose. “Do you have any idea how this looks? The one man who embodies the club’s modern ethos, and you snub him?”
“I am not snubbing him. I am not interviewing him.” Her tone was glacial.
The door opened without a knock. David, Daniel’s deputy, slipped in, his face anxious. Then Daniel himself followed, and finally, Uli Hoeneß filled the doorway, his expression one of bemused curiosity.
“What is happening in here? The whole floor can hear you,” Uli rumbled.
Daniel seized his chance. “She is refusing to interview Jupp. No explanation. It’s an insult.”
All eyes turned to Vanja. She stood straight, her posture defiant, but Karl-Heinz saw the faint tremble in the hand she held at her side. This was real. This was a line, deeply dug.
Uli looked from her tense face to Karl-Heinz’s frustration. He sighed, a deep, weary sound. “That’s okay.”
Silence.
“What?” Daniel spat. “How is that okay? She quoted ‘personal reasons.’ Jupp is a beloved member of the Bayern family. A legend.”
Uli closed his eyes for a long moment, as if consulting some internal ledger. When he opened them, he looked only at Vanja. “Her reasons are her own. Let it go.”
“This is—”
“For now, Daniel,” Uli cut him off, his voice leaving no room. “Let it go.”
Daniel stared, red-faced, then turned on his heel and left, David scurrying after him. Vanja’s breath escaped in a slow, controlled stream. “If that’s all, gentlemen, I have transcripts to prepare.”
“We’ll have a dinner tonight,” Uli said, his voice returning to its normal, hearty timber. “You, me, Jupp, and Franz. I’ve invited her, too.” He nodded at Vanja.
Karl-Heinz nodded, watching her. “Fine.”
Vanja excused herself without another word.
Vanja left the office, the echo of Uli’s intervention and Karl-Heinz’s simmering confusion a tangible heat on the back of her neck. She didn’t go to the press room. She walked out into the weak afternoon sun, across the vast, empty car park, and kept walking until her breath came in sharp clouds and the chill air cut through the lingering shame of the confrontation. Personal reasons. The phrase was a flimsy shield against a world that demanded transparency, a world she navigated with such calculated opacity. She hailed a taxi, giving the address of her hotel. She needed to change, to armor herself for the dinner she could not avoid.
The restaurant was all dark wood and low light, a temple of Bavarian tradition with prices that whispered of exclusivity. Franz Beckenbauer arrived first, an emperor in a cashmere coat. His eyes, still preternaturally sharp, found Vanja immediately as she entered on Karl-Heinz’s arm, a gesture that felt both possessive and obligatory. The Kaiser smiled, a genuine crinkling around his eyes, and waved them over.
“Vanja,” he said, rising to kiss her cheek. His cologne was subtle, expensive. “You look radiant. The Sauer piece was a masterpiece of quiet observation.”
“Thank you, Franz. He’s a poet of grass and mud,” she replied, slipping into the chair Karl-Heinz held for her.
They spoke of the Gladbach match, of tactics, of the peculiar silence of a stadium an hour after a win. The conversation was easy, fluid. Franz had a way of pulling stories from the air, of making the monumental feel like shared memory. Then he sipped his mineral water, his gaze settling on her with a softer focus. “And how is your mother?”
Vanja smiled, a different smile, warmer and edged with private amusement. “She is well, thank you. So is my father,” she added, the grin widening. “Having the time of his life in Dortmund, no doubt.”
Franz chuckled, a deep, knowing sound. Uli, who had been listening while perusing the wine list, joined in with a wheezing laugh. Karl-Heinz watched, his fork pausing over his appetizer. The laughter was textured with history, with a joke he wasn’t in on. He felt the floor tilt slightly. Vanja’s father was a Dortmund fan, yes, but this was different. This was familial.
Then Jupp arrived. He moved with the steady, deliberate pace of a man who had seen everything twice. He greeted Uli, clapped Franz on the shoulder, shook Karl-Heinz’s hand with a firm, dry grip. Then his eyes, a faded but kind blue, landed on Vanja.
“Shatzi,” he said, the affectionate diminutive dropping into the space like a stone. “Good to see you. You’ve been avoiding my calls.”
Vanja’s posture softened, a slight slump of genuine affection. “Opa,” she said. “I sent you a message.”
He shook his head, laughing as he took his seat. “Your mother told me to leave you alone. But I also told her not to marry Oldenburg’s oldest son, and she didn’t listen, did she?”
Vanja laughed, a real, unfettered sound Karl-Heinz had never heard. It cracked something open in the room.
Karl-Heinz understood now. The pieces crashed together with deafening clarity. Vanja’s mother. Jupp Heynckes’ daughter. Dana. Her Dortmund-loving father. Zoran Oldenburg. Son of Claus, the legendary boxer. Owner of Borussia Dortmund. Vanja Vrantz was not just a journalist with a Serbian surname. She was Bundesliga royalty, born of a dynasty that straddled the Ruhr’s greatest rift. She was Heynckes’ granddaughter. She was Dortmund’s princess. She looked at him at that moment, her golden-green eyes holding his across the table, and in them he saw the truth of her power, the depth of her game, and the profound, personal minefield her refusal to interview Jupp represented.
The dinner became a surreal ballet. Uli and Franz traded stories Vanja had clearly heard before, but she listened with a fond smile. Jupp talked about his garden, his dogs. He asked Vanja about her PhD, his questions sharp and informed, delving into the psychosocial pressures on youth academy players. It was a normal family dinner, suffocating in its normality. Karl-Heinz ate without tasting, his mind racing over every interaction, every fuck, every challenge. She had let him believe he held the power, the access, the leverage. All this time, she held the master key to the kingdom’s deepest rooms in her blood.
After brandy, after promises to meet again soon, the group dispersed in the frosty night. Uli offered Vanja a lift. She declined. “I’ll walk. It’s not far.” Her hotel was in the opposite direction.
“I’ll accompany you,” Karl-Heinz said, his voice leaving no room for debate. She merely nodded.
They walked in silence for a block, the tension between them a physical third presence. The fairy lights strung across the street glittered coldly.
“You are Jupp Heynckes’ granddaughter.” He stated it flatly.
“I am.”
“And Zoran Oldenburg’s daughter.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t think that was relevant information?”
She stopped, turning to face him. The hotel entrance was just ahead. “Was it relevant to the piece on Peter Sauer? To my interview with Müller? To my analysis of your financial reports? My family name is Vrantz. My work stands on its own.”
“It stands on a fucking tectonic plate of privilege and inside knowledge you deliberately obscured!” His whisper was fierce, cutting through the quiet street. “You let me think…”
“You thought what you wanted to think,” she interrupted, her own voice low and deadly. “You saw a beautiful, ambitious outsider you could intimidate or seduce into a favorable narrative. You never asked, Karl-Heinz. You assumed. That’s on you.”
He grabbed her arm, not roughly, but with a firmness that spun her towards him. “That night in my office. Against the window. Was that part of the game, too? A little thrill for the Dortmund princess slumming it with the enemy?”
Her eyes flashed. “Fuck you.” She wrenched her arm free. “That had nothing to do with Dortmund or Bayern. That was me. And you. Nothing else.”
He followed her into the hotel lobby, past the startled concierge, into the waiting elevator. The doors slid shut. She didn’t press a button. They stood facing the mirrored walls, their reflections trapped and repeating into infinity.
“Why did you fuck me?” he demanded, his reflection’s eyes boring into hers.
“Why did you fuck me?” she shot back.
The elevator began to move—she had hit the button for her floor with her elbow. The motion jolted them. He saw the pulse hammering in her throat, the faint sheen on her skin beneath the lobby’s harsh light.
“Because you’re a brilliant, vicious, stunning fucking puzzle,” he growled, stepping into her space, backing her against the mirrored wall. “And I wanted to take you apart.”
“Then take me apart,” she breathed, her defiance melting into a raw challenge.
He kissed her, a collision of teeth and tongue, a punishment and a capitulation. He tasted the brandy, the coffee, the sharp, metallic edge of their fight. His hands shoved her coat from her shoulders. Hers were at his belt, already working the buckle. The elevator dinged, the doors opening onto her deserted floor. They stumbled out, a tangled mess of grasping hands and furious energy, leaving her coat in a heap on the elevator floor.
He pinned her against the wall beside her door, his knee pushing her legs apart. She got the door open, and they fell into the dark room. No finesse. No teasing. The silent, professional dinner, the shocking revelation, the fury—it all combusted into a pure, desperate need for physical reconfirmation.
He spun her around, bent her over the small desk by the window. The city lights spread out below, indifferent. He yanked her dress up, pulled her tights and underwear down to her ankles in one brutal motion. She was already wet, her arousal slick and hot when he touched her. He didn’t linger. He unzipped his trousers, freed his aching cock, and drove into her from behind.
The entry was a sharp, breathtaking stretch. She cried out, her nails scraping the polished wood of the desk. He didn’t pause. He set a relentless, pounding rhythm, each thrust a wordless argument. His hands gripped her hips, holding her in place, slamming her back onto him.
“You lied,” he grunted, pistoning into her.
“I omitted!” she gasped, pushing back against him, meeting his force with her own.
“You played me.”
“You wanted to be played!” Her voice was breaking with each deep penetration. “You wanted the game.”
He fucked her harder, the desk creaking in protest. The slap of skin, the wet, sucking sounds of their joining, filled the dark room. He leaned over her, his chest against her back, his mouth at her ear. “Does your Opa know his precious Shatzi gets her cunt stretched by the Bayern director? Does your Dortmund father know I fill his little girl with come?”
The filthy, provocative words tipped her over the edge. She came with a shattered, choking scream, her internal muscles clamping around him in violent, rhythmic pulses. The intense tightness pulled his own orgasm from him. He buried himself to the hilt, a final, deep stab, and roared as he emptied into her, his release hot and seemingly endless.
He collapsed over her, both of them panting, sweating, spent. The anger had been fucked out, leaving a hollow, trembling exhaustion. He slowly pulled out. A trickle of his release followed, a warm streak down her inner thigh.
She didn’t move from the desk, her forehead resting on her arms. In the city’s glow, he saw the faint tremble in her shoulders. Was it aftershocks, or something else?
He righted his clothes with clumsy hands. She finally straightened, pulling her underwear up, letting her dress fall. She walked to the minibar, opened a small bottle of water, and drank it all without looking at him.