“I’m not leaving.”
“Dombroski just called me to see if I could talk some sense into you. I can’t believe you.”
He had no response.
“You knew last night that you were going to do this. Why did you lie to me?”
“So I didn’t have to listen to you argue with me.”
“Well, you can listen now. Scott, we tried to stay on the case. And the colonel said no. A good soldier shows initiative and shows balls, but there are always limits. Even for you.”
Brodie stood up from the fountain and started walking across the square. “I was always a lousy soldier, Maggie.”
“I doubt your men in Iraq felt that way.”
He didn’t respond.
“This case is important, but there will always be more victims who deserve justice. And where will you be then?”
Home watching TV? Drunk on a beach in Florida? Dead in a back alley in Berlin? That all sounded better than going back to Quantico. He said, “I appreciate your concern for my future. You wouldn’t be much of a partner if you didn’t try to change my mind. But it’s over. I’m done.”
“You’re the one who told me that our CID colleagues could handle it. I guess you were just snowing me on that too.”
“I was trying to convince myself. You have a different calculation to make, Maggie. You’ve got a long career ahead of you.”
“Get down off your cross.”
“I like the view up here.”
There was a long silence. Then Taylor said, “Last night I thought about requesting a transfer to Quantico. I thought maybe we could…” She trailed off; then her tone shifted. “You’re not the hero, Scott. Not on this. You’re burning your life down and pretending it’s something else. You’ve got an hour and a half to come to your fucking senses and get to the airport.” She hung up.
Brodie kept walking and put his phone in his pocket. He’d expected Taylor to be angry, maybe disappointed. But she was more than that. She’d been looking toward a continued working relationship after this case, which came as a bit of a surprise to him. Maybe it shouldn’t have. When it came to questionable and self-destructive choices, they were kindred spirits, and Brodie had upped the ante without looping her in. She felt betrayed. Rejected. And possibly resentful of the feeling that her partner was entering territory where she knew she couldn’t or wouldn’t follow.
Well, that was all the psychoanalysis Brodie could handle for the day, and it wasn’t even sunrise. He grabbed a takeout coffee at a nearby café, then exited the square and turned onto Karl-Liebknecht Straße, a broad six-lane boulevard lined with large modern buildings. He crossed the street and continued until he reached a drab gray office building with a sign in front that readSTASI-UNTERLAGEN-ARCHIV.
He looked at the wide eight-story building. Every level above the ground floor was lined with small square windows, most of them shuttered by opaque blinds. He assumed these floors held the stacks—the endless river of files produced by the Stasi over the course of four decades, their magnum opus, relating the lives and loyalties of East Germany’s captive citizens.
A short flight of stairs led to a large entryway beneath a glass awning splattered with bird shit. Above the door was a security camera, the only one Brodie had seen outside of metro stations. Was this German irony?
He checked his watch: 7:58A.M.He finished his coffee, and at precisely 8:00A.M.fluorescent lights blinked on in the lobby.
Brodie tossed the paper cup in a nearby trash bin, then ascended the stairs and entered through the automatic glass doors, hoping that he was following in a dead man’s footsteps.
CHAPTER 36
Brodie looked around the low-ceilinged lobby. In front of him was a row of turnstiles that led to a bank of elevators. To his right was an elevated security desk and to his left was a waiting area.
He approached the security desk where a hefty mid-fifties man in a dark suit with close-cropped blond hair sat near a computer monitor.
Brodie said, “Guten Morgen.”
The security man, whose nametag identified him as “Lehmann,” looked back at Brodie, blank-faced. “Haben Sie einen Termin?”
“Sprechen Sie Englisch?”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
