“The travel office will e-mail you and Ms. Taylor a flight itinerary. I told them nothing too early. Hit the town tonight. You’re temporarily unemployed.”
“Thank you, sir. Anything further?”
Dombroski didn’t respond. Maybe he was thinking of how to end this conversation in a way that wouldn’t leave his favorite agent with the impression that he’d been thrown under the bus.
After a moment Dombroski said, “It will be different when you’re back here. And you can choose your partner, if that’s what you want.”
The colonel was clearly feeling guilty. Which was a good time for Scott Brodie to get something in return for not making this difficult. But he decided to feign compliance. “I appreciate that, sir. I look forward to discussing the details back at Quantico. Anything further?”
“Negative further. Safe travels.” Dombroski hung up.
Brodie placed his phone on the coffee table and looked at Taylor, who was staring at something on her tablet and appeared to have not been listening. He said, “It’s over. Flight home tomorrow. You’ll be e-mailed an itinerary.”
She nodded.
“For the record, I think we might be going a little far up our own asses here, Maggie. Which was also Harry’s mistake. Whatever he was doing, and for whatever reason he was doing it, Vance spent most of his career hunting terrorists, and apparently the hunter became the hunted. Let’s remember that the simplest explanation is usually the right one.” Brodie put the Stasi report back in the envelope and placed it on the table.
Taylor was still looking down at her tablet, deep in thought.
“Taylor? Do you hear what I’m saying?”
She looked up at him. “Why didn’t I think of this before?”
“What?”
She passed her tablet to him. “Take a look at the great god Odin.”
Brodie took Taylor’s tablet and looked at an old black-and-white sketch of the Norse god, depicted in a long cloak and holding a staff. He had only one eye—his right eye, with a gaping black hole where his left eye had been.
Taylor said, “Tell me that’s a coincidence.”
Brodie didn’t respond. He stared at the picture of Odin, and the eye of the old god stared back. Maybe the mutilation of Harry’s bodywasa message, just not the one they’d thought. Not an eye for an eye, not an act of revenge. No… it was ataunt.
I did this. I’m still here. Catch me if you can.
CHAPTER 30
Brodie stared at the picture of Odin, trying to remember the little he’d ever known about Germanic mythology.
Taylor, who must have paid more attention in class, said, “Odin took his own eye. An act of self-sacrifice to gain ultimate knowledge.”
Brodie remembered Anna saying that Odin disguised himself as a wanderer to learn about the world and its people, but she’d overlooked another aspect of both the god and the man who used his name—sacrificing part of oneself to gain that knowledge. Being a double agent takes a toll. You betray your own country and people and sleep with the enemy. The prize is access to secret knowledge, and knowledge is power. But the price might be your soul.
Taylor said, “Anna insisted that the search for Odin was Harry’s only focus here. If she’s right, then I think that is what got him killed.”
Maybe. But in a tangled case like this, you needed to make sure you were unraveling the threads in the right order. “I think Qasim is the key here. He may have been present at Storkow, and he may have met Odin there, but he is also tied to these Syrians in one way or another. When Harry made contact with Abbas al-Hamdani and presented himself as an Army CID investigator looking for a former Iraqi military intelligence officer, he sealed his own fate.”
“Sounds right. Feels wrong.”
“That can be the title of our report.”
“What report?”
“For Dombroski. Due on his desk end of day Friday.”
She shook her head. “This can’t wait until Friday. We need to talk to Schröder.”
“We’re the walking dead now, Maggie. No one is going to work with us, and whatever we have to say is going to be seen through the lens of two desperate agents with a rapidly approaching expiration date.”
