HI SCOTT. I’M THRILLED TO SEE YOU ARE GETTING OUT MORE. ATTACHED IS YOUR FLIGHT AND LODGING INFO. THE HOTEL WAS SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED BY MS. TAYLOR, AND I AM SURE YOU WILL LET HER KNOW WHAT YOU THINK OF IT. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS. She added, as the military and their friends often do, GODSPEED.
That line about the hotel sounded ominous. He opened up the lodging info and saw that they were staying at a place called “Art Hotel.” He pulled up a map of Berlin and searched for the hotel, and was not surprised to find that it was in the center of the dicey neighborhood of Neukölln, and actually across the street from Körnerpark where Vance’s body had been found.Specifically requested by Ms. Taylor.Of course.
He checked out photos of the hotel on Google. It appeared to be a bare-bones crash pad one step above a youth hostel. Reviewers remarked on “the hospitality of the owner Mustafa” and “the smell of old socks in the hallway.”
If the travel office had handled it on their own, they would have booked some standard spot in central Berlin near the embassy. But Maggie Taylor was no doubt acting on experience from her days in Civil Affairs in Afghanistan, where she had to have her nose to the ground and be among the localpopulace negotiating with tribal leaders and farmers. She probably thought it was psychologically and tactically smart to begin and end each day walking the same streets that Harry Vance did in the last moments of his life. Also, given all the agencies involved in this investigation—and its political sensitivity—Brodie and Taylor were going to be kept on a tight leash, so staying in Neukölln was a good way to stay below the radar and maybe locate and interview witnesses without hassle from the FBI or the German police. It was good to be back with a partner who wasn’t an idiot and who cared about her job. On the other hand, she hadn’t consulted Brodie, her senior, on the choice of hotels. Good initiative? Yes. Poor judgment? For sure.
Brodie checked the flight itinerary, which included Taylor’s flight to DC out of Nashville International, the closest major airport to Fort Campbell. She landed at 3:00P.M.tomorrow, and then they were flying Lufthansa, 5:20P.M.departure, landing at Berlin Tegel Airport at 7:15A.M.the following morning. There was also contact information for the car and driver that would be picking them up at the airport and, he saw, bringing them directly to the embassy, which meant that he and Taylor would be briefed, probably by the legal attaché, FBI Agent Whitmore, and possibly someone from the Berlin Police Department. They weren’t wasting any time on this.
Brodie had been to Berlin only once, in April 2000 during his junior year at NYU. His roommate, Adam Kogan, was doing a study abroad semester and invited Brodie to crash at his apartment for a couple of weeks during spring break. Kogan was a European history major but seemed to be mostly studying the local women. He was Jewish, and had explained to Brodie how Jewish culture had become trendy among young Berliners, maybe as a way to deal with generational guilt. Kogan said he had never had an easier time getting laid, and Brodie managed to benefit by association. It was a good couple of weeks.
Kogan’s apartment had been somewhere in the former East Berlin, not far from where the Wall once stood. Brodie had been surprised to see all the open land where the massive structure used to be—stretches of overgrown grass in the middle of a bustling city. Construction cranes rose everywhere, as if everyone was working overtime to cover up the ugly scar that ran through their city and their psyches.
Brodie closed his computer, threw on a coat, and brought his beer out to the front porch. He sat on a wicker chair and stared out at the quietsuburban night. The cold wind had picked up. Streetlamps threw sharp circles of light on the empty blacktop roads.
Brodie felt as though the past five months had been a shadow play of his old life, familiar forms and movements with no substance. He still had his badge, his gun, and his rank, and he’d pretended to still care about his job. But he wasn’t sure he did. He wasn’t even sure why he broke up with Theresa, whom he had liked. He’d told her it all felt wrong. But the thing that was wrong was him.
He thought about calling Maggie Taylor, but that was the beer thinking. He didn’t know how that particular reunion was going to go, and best to reconnect in person.
He thought again about Harry Vance, whose death had set Brodie’s life back in motion. In one of his lectures, Vance had discussed how a terrorist is different from other criminals. If you are hunting a murderer or a thief, they don’t want to be caught by you, but their crime otherwise has nothing to do with you. The terrorist, on the other hand—the true believer—seeks the destruction not only of his victims but also of the entire world order that seeks justice for the dead. “And if you want to catch the bastard,” Vance had said, “you must be as invested in his downfall as he is in yours. Don’t bother pretending it’s not personal.”
Brodie had no idea who had killed Harry Vance, or why, but he had a premonition that Vance’s advice would prove valuable. And making things personal was one of Scott Brodie’s specialties.
CHAPTER 5
Brodie rose before dawn and went for a jog in the cold morning air, determined not to look like Stanley Dombroski. The neighborhood was safe enough, but he had his Beretta tucked into a belly band in case his last overseas assignment was following him.
He jogged along the cracked sidewalks past rows of modest split-levels and ranch houses that stood amidst towering sycamores. This was one of the older suburbs in the area, developed before the DC-area building boom that created endless sprawls of McMansions. He preferred it here, where the trees were bigger and the houses and egos were smaller.
He covered three miles along his usual route, returned home, showered, and put on his robe, then had a heart-healthy breakfast of black coffee and gas station sushi that he’d picked up yesterday. Maybe the day before.
Pieces of his conversation with Dombroski came back to him in no particular order. Regarding his gun, he hadn’t been on assignment without a weapon in a while. Dombroski had said he could be issued a firearm if he needed it. Well, when do you know if you need a gun? Usually not until you’re staring down the barrel of someone else’s.
Germany, like most of Western Europe, was relatively safe. But Berlin, like all big cities, had its problems. Brodie got his laptop and did some Internet reading on Neukölln, which seemed to be a hard neighborhood to categorize—a hodgepodge of pensioners and young families drawn by the cheap rent, longtime Turkish and Arab residents, recent Libyan and Syrian refugees, and a wave of white gentrifiers. A number of Arab crime families operated in the area, dealing in drugs and human trafficking, and there was the occasional gang-related murder of another gang member that botheredno one except the murder victim. There were also a fair number of trendy and edgy clubs, bars, and coffee shops, which attracted Berliners and adventurous tourists.
So, like a lot of urban neighborhoods undergoing change, Neukölln was divided by precarious barriers of race, culture, wealth, and, in this case, religion. He wondered if the murder of an American in a community park would shake up the neighborhood when it hit the news.
On that subject, Brodie ran another search on Harry Vance to see if the murder had been reported yet. It had. Top stories in theNew York Times, theWashington Post, USA Today, and London’sTimes, as well as all the German-language dailies such asBildandDie Zeit. TheWaPoheadline read: “AMERICAN ARMY INVESTIGATOR MURDERED IN BERLIN PARK.” The London paper declared: “AMERICAN ARMY OFFICER FOUND DEAD IN HEART OF BERLIN’S REFUGEE COMMUNITY.” He did a quick scan of the articles, all of which had miraculously managed not to bury the lede.
Brodie turned on the TV and switched to a morning news show. The chyron read: “AMERICAN ARMY INVESTIGATOR MURDERED IN BERLIN’S REFUGEE HAVEN.” Three news anchors with the combined IQ of a smart chimp discussed the murder, sharing the screen with a superimposed portrait of Special Agent Vance—the same photo included in Brodie’s briefing folder.
The anchors posed questions: Did this have the hallmarks of an ISIS operation? Are terrorist cells active in this part of Berlin? Did the victim have knowledge of an impending attack? How well does the German government vet refugees from Syria? Instead of finding an expert or even a legitimate journalist to direct these questions toward, they asked themselves, and then listened intently to each other’s bullshit, running down the clock until the next prescription drug commercial.
Brodie turned off the TV. He got dressed in jeans, a button-down dress shirt, and a sports jacket, and called for an Uber.
The drive to Dulles International Airport took a little under an hour, and by the time he checked his bag and got through security, it was three-thirty. He went to the arrival board to check on Taylor’s flight from Nashville. It had landed about thirty minutes prior at a different terminal, so she wouldprobably be on the AeroTrain by now. He tried to guess how this reunion was going to play out. No way of knowing. But he was looking forward to seeing her.
The gate for their five-twenty flight to Berlin was posted, so he headed in that direction and spotted a pub in the concourse. He entered and sat on a stool at the bar. A few other travelers were seated with suitcases at their feet and their noses in their phones.
The bartender, a tall, ruddy-faced guy in his late forties, approached. “What can I getcha?”
“A German pilsner.”
“Radeberger?”
“Sure.”
The bartender walked over to the taps.
