Taylor said something to the driver, then to Brodie: “The German officer claimed he’s part of a neo-Nazi group called NordFaust—I guess, Northern Fist, Fist of the North, or something—and that they have agents everywhere. Refers to a ‘secret army’ within the German military. So, I guess that’s why they called in the CID counterterror guys. Vance and Jenkins conducted their own interview, and by now the colonel has sobered up and also clammed up, and he does not repeat his statements. The Germans write it off as drunken boasting, and the Americans seem to concur. He is arrested for assault and a counterterrorism case is not opened.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“How old is Colonel Brandt?”
“Gotta go.”
“Maybe he was ex-Stasi.”
“You’re reaching. I’m hanging up.” She added, “I wrote a very thorough report on our findings and analysis, which I am handing to Sharon Whitmore directly.”
“Maybe you should leave it for General Kiernan at the Defense Attaché Office instead.”
“What do you care?” She reminded him, “You don’t work for the American government anymore.” She added, “And I don’t work for you.”
“Right… okay. But I have no faith in the FBI to take our theories and findings seriously.”
“Neither do I. But she is required to share the report with our replacements from Kaiserslautern. I’ll make sure Colonel Trask has a copy as well.” She thought of something and added, “You still have that slide you took from Harry’s jacket?”
“I do.”
“You need to turn it over.”
“Right.”
“I’m serious, Scott. It’s evidence, and they’ll need to have it analyzed. I’ll call you after the debrief at Quantico.” She added, “It doesn’t have to be over. Listen to your own voice of reason. It’s very faint and usually drowned out by your ego, but it’s there.”
“Thanks for that. Have a good flight.” He hung up and slipped his phone in his pocket.
Taylor would turn in her case report. Whitmore would pretend to be grateful, Taylor would pretend she was leaving this case in good hands, and they would all pretend justice was done once Vance’s murder was pinned on the three Syrians who were in fact homicide victims themselves, killed in an elaborate false flag operation.
Unless, of course, Scott Brodie was wrong about that—and everything else. He was at least open to the idea that he was completely losing his mind.
Well, better to leave that parsing for the after-action review. Or maybe, in his case, for the arresting officers’ police report.
He thought about Elsa Ziegler, a sort of haunted look on her face when he left her office. When she first learned about Harry Vance’s murder, she claimed to not think her brief conversation from eight months ago was relevant to the case. But a part of her feared that it was. The part that was buried deep, the old paranoia from the vanished East that she’d worked so hard to unlearn.
But history still had teeth in a place like this, and maybe the old divisions and old wounds remained, despite knocking down the Wall and selling the rubble to tourists, despite the cosmopolitan skyline that rose over the old death strip between East and West where guard dogs and snipersonce patrolled, despite thirty years of trying to move on and willfully ignoring the forces that beat back against the current of history.
Brodie looked up at the gray hulk of the archives building. He’d come here on a whim and had struck pay dirt. Whether he was propelled by sheer luck, or brilliant intuition, or a guiding hand from beyond the grave, he knew he had to finish what Harry Vance had started.
CHAPTER 37
As Brodie walked, he called Mark Jenkins. “I need to meet you now.”
“I thought you and Taylor were on your way home.”
“I’m taking a later flight.”
“Okay… sorry you got pulled.”
“This is best handled by the Fifth MP.”
“Yeah. But… not sure I’m supposed to talk to you.”
“I’m mostly harmless. Where do you want to meet?”
