Karl Kleine-Brockhoff disappeared without trace in Portugal.
Karl Kleine-Brockhoff was vacationing in Portugal with his wife on the southern Algarve coast, where they were staying with another couple in the village of Casa Branca. Last Saturday, the 69-year-old German, who was reportedly in a good mood, told the others he would walk the 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) to a festival in the neighboring village of Alcoutim.
His wife and friends decided to travel the stretch by car, and said they would meet him in Alcoutim. Kleine-Brockhoff, a passionate hiker and in good health, didn't set off for Alcoutim along the main paved road but on a longer trail through a hilly, semi-desert landscape of cacti and dry creekbeds.
The others waited for him in Alcoutim, but he never showed up.
Kleine-Brockhoff was wearing short pants, a blue shirt, a sun hat, and simple running shoes rather than hiking shoes. Most importantly, he had no water with him. "We suspected he had injured himself or had a heart attack, maybe because he'd underestimated the hills and the Mediterranean heat," said his son Thomas, a Washington DC-based correspondent for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, who flew to Portugal as soon as he learned about his missing father.
The Republican National Guard has combed the region systematically and searched every square foot using sniffer dogs and an infrared-equipped helicopter from Spain.
"The pilots have said, 'There's no body here -- neither dead nor alive,'" Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff said. "If they can't find a dead or injured body, then the question is: what happened?"
Police in the nearby city of Faro suspect a kidnapping -- as in the case of three-year-old Madeleine McCann, a British child who disappeared on the Algarve coast in early May.
The other explanation -- that the retired Kleine-Brockhoff disappeared on purpose, to start a new life -- has been rejected by his son. "A hike to another town through a semi-desert -- that's how you start a new life?" he asks.
He said his father had no credit card, no ID card and no driver's license. He was, however, carrying €500 -- but only because he was afraid of burglars and never left cash in hotel rooms.
How does a 69-year-old man disappear in Portugal? It's a question Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff keeps asking himself. No kidnappers have contacted the family. "For me, as a son," he says, "I have to assume he's still lying somewhere injured -- and the clock is ticking because of the heat and the lack of water."
And if Kleine-Brockhoff was in fact kidnapped, then time is also of the essence. "With a criminal case, another clock is ticking -- one whose speed depends on the psychology of the kidnappers," Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff says. "And how exactly that clock works, no one knows."
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