Taylor said, “Not you, apparently.”
Kim was quiet a moment. A cluster of French schoolkids passed them, then he said, “I defended you to Whitmore and Butler. I tried to convince them to not make that phone call to Quantico. You both are smart, hardworking, and could not be more motivated to solve this murder. That’sworth putting up with your shit, in my opinion. But I’m starting to think there is something else going on here, something almost pathological about how you both disregard and disrespect authority.”
Everyone was an unlicensed psychoanalyst these days. Brodie said, “Authority is granted but respect is earned. And one without the other isn’t worth much.”
“Do they teach that at CID?”
“No. On the battlefield.”
Taylor opened her satchel, removed the manila envelope, and handed it to Kim. “The Stasi report on Odin. Given to us by Anna Albrecht and translated by Harry Vance.”
He looked at the envelope and asked, “Does this mention Tariq Qasim by name?”
“No.”
“What about Storkow?”
“The report was deliberately vague.”
“What about Iraq?”
“Read the goddamn report.”
He looked between Brodie and Taylor. “I think you’re reaching.”
Brodie said, “That’s because you think you’ve already solved this case.”
Kim looked at him. “You want to know what I think, Scott? I think Special Agent Vance was in love, and that made him blind, and that made him stupid. So, is Colonel Qasim connected to Odin? Maybe. Was Harry really working that case and was that his sole focus here? Maybe. But is that what got him killed? No. These jihadis were gunning for him because of what happened in Libya, and he was too deep into this Cold War cold case to see it. He had stars in his eyes. Or his nose in the archives. And his dick was doing his thinking.”
Taylor asked, “It’s that simple?”
Kim looked at her. “You call that simple?” He looked over the railing and pointed down. “You see that?”
Brodie looked down at the floor of the dome, where a circular glass panel offered a bird’s-eye view of a room full of leather-upholstered chairs arranged in rows.
Kim said, “That’s where the Bundestag meets. The German parliament.They put the glass there as a symbol of transparency, anyone can look in on the proceedings. The message is: Authoritarianism will never return to Germany. Nice idea. But how many tourists come here and even know that? A generation from now, what will visitors see? A kind of interesting view. A hole in the floor.” He kept looking downward, then said, “We want the past to matter. To have some impact on the present. Otherwise, what’s the point of anything? But the lines aren’t so clear. And an old spy fighting an old war for a dead cause…” He shook his head. “It’s lost its power, that story. It doesn’t reach in. It’s notalive. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It matters to some,” said Taylor.
“Right,” said Kim. “The victims.” He turned toward them. “Like Anna Albrecht. They hold on to the pain, but eventually they die and the pain dies with them. And the rest of us build memorials and monuments and hope maybe someone else understands what they mean even if they will never fully feel why they matter.”
Brodie thought back to the people climbing on top of the stone slabs of the Holocaust Memorial like it was a playground. This was getting bleak. He said to Taylor, “We passed on our Intel. Mission accomplished. Let’s go get a drink.”
Kim said, “You can’t allow things to get too heavy, can you, Mr. Brodie?”
Brodie stared at him. “It’s always heavy, Mr. Kim. What I carry with me. And you need to either go fuck yourself or figure out who’s fucking you.” He walked back down the ramp. He could hear Taylor and Kim exchange a few more words, and then Taylor followed.
She caught up with Brodie as he was exiting the dome onto the rooftop. She said, “You burned our last bridge, Scott. We might still need him.”
“We don’t need anyone. We are off this case. And after today there is no ‘we.’?”
Taylor didn’t respond. The rain was falling in a steady stream now. Brodie walked toward the edge of the rooftop and looked to the east, where the sky was growing black with storm clouds.
Taylor walked up next to him. “Scott. Look at me.”
He turned to her.
“We did our duty.”
