The stone façade of the building had been repaired and restored, but it still showed the scars of bullets and shrapnel from the fierce fighting of April 1945, when the last German defenders of Berlin took a stand in the Reichstag, and the Russians took it away from them, room by room.
Brodie could not imagine the blood that had been spilled here… Well, he didn’t have to imagine it—he’d experienced it. Mortal combat is not as much fun as it sounds, and getting shot at gets old fast.
“What are you thinking?” asked Taylor.
“Baghdad. Fallujah.”
She nodded and advised him, “As Longfellow once said, ‘Let the dead past bury its dead.’?”
“Right.”
Brodie looked south, toward the edge of the Tiergarten and the Brandenburg Gate. He’d been keeping an eye out for a tail, but he saw no sign of their German friend from the Hotel Adlon or any other familiar-looking strangers.
After a minute he spotted FBI Agent David Kim striding across the plaza, wearing his black topcoat and carrying an umbrella.
As he approached, Taylor said, “Guten Tag. Thanks for meeting.”
Kim stopped a few feet from them and smiled. “Been having an interesting day thanks to you two. Schröder brought Rafeeq Nasir and Anna Albrecht in for questioning. Invited the legats and me to observe both interviews.”
Taylor asked, rhetorically, “Why weren’t Scott and I invited?”
“Maybe Schröder thought you needed time to pack.”
“He’s going to miss us,” said Brodie.
“Like he misses his hemorrhoids.”
More importantly, Brodie and Taylor should have been there to corroborate or contradict anything that Nasir or Anna said. Clearly, the two CID cowboys from Quantico were being cut loose before they rode out of town.
Taylor asked, “Were they held?”
Kim shook his head. “Questioned and released. Nasir was told he was a person of interest.” Kim chuckled. “He was very polite. I think he’d been expecting a police visit. Captain Soliman was also there, and he and Nasir seemed to have been previously acquainted, and they exchanged some words in Arabic that were not so polite. Soliman has a hard-on for this guy, which makes sense for a homicide detective working his beat, but even he probably understands that an organized crime figure wouldn’t be risking this kind of exposure if he actually had any involvement in the murder of Mr. Vance or the disappearance of Tariq Qasim.”
Brodie nodded in agreement. Rafeeq Nasir was an accomplished bullshit artist who probably had a major part in his high school play of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights. And Captain Soliman could easily detect his compatriot’s bullshit.
“Bottom line,” said Kim, “Schröder seemed to believe that Rafeeq Nasir was being truthful—and helpful.”
Taylor asked, “And Anna Albrecht?”
“She came in after Nasir left. Real salty. Gave Schröder a hard time, which was fun to watch. I don’t think she cares much for the German police.”
“Her father was murdered by the authorities,” said Taylor. “That might explain her distrust.”
“Execution by the state is not murder. Espionage is a capital crime.”
Taylor pointed out, “The state in question was a murderous dictatorship.”
Kim shrugged. “The GDR met the end it deserved, and the Germans are one big happy family again. Speaking of which.” He gestured to the Reichstag. “Let’s get out of the rain.” He added, “Great view from the dome.”
Brodie assured him, “I don’t need a view. I need you to listen—”
“Follow me.”
Brodie was getting tired of this guy’s act, but he and Taylor were short on friends these days, so they followed Kim to a glass structure near the base of the Reichstag where people were waiting in line to go through a security check. After a minute they were ushered into the structure, which contained a metal detector and security officers. Brodie took note that Agent Kim was unarmed. More importantly, Kim had no recording device on him, and Kim now knew that Brodie and Taylor were also not wired, which was the whole point of this visit to the dome. Agent Kim was very clever. And paranoid.
They continued through the security building to an outdoor ramp that led into a small room with an elevator that took them to the top floor, where they exited into a marble lobby that opened to the expansive rooftop.
In the center of the roof was the dome, an eighty-foot-tall structure of glass plates and steel with a spiral walkway wrapping around its interior.
