“What happened?”
“I stopped having a good time.”
“Okay.”
Brodie hesitated, then asked, “What about you? Were you able to fight them off at Fort Campbell?”
She suppressed a smile. “Barely. But I decided I wouldn’t date anyone in the military. Create some boundaries for once.”
Well, that was a welcome change for Maggie Taylor. They made eye contact and Brodie asked, “Any old exes darken your doorway?”
Taylor took a long sip of her wine. “I heard from him. Within two days of being at Fort Campbell.”
The “him” in question was a CIA officer by the name of Trent Chilcott with whom Maggie Taylor had had an unhealthy relationship during and after her Civil Affairs training at Fort Bragg before deploying toAfghanistan. Trent had taken advantage of his role as one of Ms. Taylor’s intelligence instructors, regaling his young student with war stories, including his time as a paramilitary fighter in the CIA’s Special Operations Group tasked with hunting down Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora in the early days of the Afghan war. If Brodie ever had the displeasure of meeting Mr. Chilcott, he’d be sure to remind him that he and his CIA buddies had allowed bin Laden to escape into Pakistan for another decade, and that it took the Navy SEALs to finally send the asshole to Paradise.
Getting involved with a CIA operative was not necessarily a great move at the beginning of a military career, but a young Maggie Taylor could hardly be blamed for falling for Trent’s act. Once she returned from a few months in Afghanistan with her innocence lost and her worldview broadened, she’d tried to break things off with him. At which point Ms. Taylor learned the hard lesson that once you get into bed with a spy, it’s not so easy to get out. Especially if the spy thinks you can be useful to him in other ways. And their continued relationship, as it were, had compromised the rest of her service in Afghanistan—as well as Brodie and Taylor’s mission in Venezuela.
Brodie asked, “Did you see him?”
“He sent me flowers.”
“Pretty thoughtful for a sociopath.”
“He included a note congratulating me on my new assignment.” She added, “He wanted me to know that he knew where I was.”
“Anything else?”
“Why do I have the impression I’m being interrogated?”
“If I was interrogating you, I’d be much more charming.”
Taylor set her glass down and turned toward Brodie. “I told you I trusted you, and I’ve noticed that you have not said the same to me. Do you trust me? If the answer is no, I will get a flight back to the States as soon as we land in Berlin.”
“That sounds like a big waste of jet fuel. Think about your carbon footprint.”
Taylor did not respond. Her big brown eyes stared at him, unblinking.
Brodie sometimes wondered how much of Mama Taylor’s murderous temperament had passed down to her daughter, who was a cool customer on the outside but definitely had something smoldering on the inside. Infact, Brodie had the distinct feeling that he was one wiseass comment away from a punch in the face.
He said, “I trust you. If I didn’t, you wouldn’t be on this plane right now.”
“Dombroski gavemethis case beforeyou, Mr. Brodie, even knew about it. I was going to Berlin regardless of whether you joined me.”
Well, someone had gotten a bit cocky since their last assignment together. A promotion will do that to you. But she might also be right. Was he the expendable partner on this mission?
He said, “It doesn’t matter. I trust you, you trust me, and together we can play Spot the Spook once we get to the embassy.”
“You think Langley’s going to have someone on this?”
“Let’s assume they’re interested in the murder of a U.S. Army CID counterterrorism officer. Also, I have a feeling the Agency is not done with either of us.”
Taylor was quiet for a moment. Then she lowered her voice and said, “We should assume our phone calls and electronic communications will be surveilled when we are within a one-mile radius of the embassy.”
“That’s interestingly specific.”
Taylor reached into her satchel and pulled out a manila folder, then opened it and produced a map of central Berlin. The American Embassy had an X over it in yellow highlighter, and a circle was drawn in a wide radius around it. “Remember that scandal from a few years back, where Angela Merkel claimed that the U.S. had been tapping her cell phone?”
Brodie did remember the German Chancellor complaining about that, and doing it publicly, which embarrassed both nations.
