“Maybe it was a honeytrap. A seductress hired to get info from CID Agent Vance. The fastest way to a man’s secrets is through his schwantz.”
“I bet I know what that is.”
“Right. It’s Yiddish, not German. I dated a Jewish girl at NYU who taught me Yiddish. Mostly the dirty words.”
She ignored that and said, “A honeytrap also does not compute. Unless Harry Vance is not the same man you described.”
“Right. Harry was a pro.” He added, “Let’s hear what Mark Jenkins has to say.”
Taylor nodded.
Brodie watched out the window as the elevated train rumbled over the city. He looked north toward Alexanderplatz and the adjacent Berlin TV Tower, an imposing concrete shaft topped with a steel sphere and a broadcast antenna. It was built by the East Germans as a display of Communist power and ingenuity, and had since morphed from a symbol of Cold War division into an icon of a united Germany—just like the Brandenburg Gate and the remnants of the Wall, and probably a dozen other sights and symbols in this city of multiple personality disorders. The tower was still used for broadcasting, and Brodie recalled that it contained a rotating restaurant where you could enjoy some of the best views and worst food in all of Berlin. Beware of restaurants that rotate.
“The Pope’s revenge,” said Taylor.
“What?”
She pointed out the window toward the tower. “The sunlight makes a cross on the sphere. I read that during the Cold War it was called the Pope’s revenge.”
Brodie looked at the cross of sunlight on the paneled sphere. He didn’t put a whole lot of stock in spiritual symbolism, and he’d never seen the Virgin Mary in his morning pancakes. But he hoped this accidental refraction of sunlight had brought a little solace—or at least bitter amusement—to the Christians forced by circumstance to live on the wrong side of the Wall, where the state religion was no religion.
They changed trains, and after a few more stops they got out at Alexanderplatz Station, a large structure with a vaulted roof and a bustling platform.
Brodie walked toward a newsstand where there was a rack of German and international newspapers, each featuring a photo of Harry Vance on its front page. A few German dailies named the neighborhood of Neukölln in their screaming headlines.
Brodie spotted the LondonTimesand grabbed a copy, then brought it to the register.
The clerk, a thick balding man in his early fifties, said, “Drei fünfzig.”
Brodie handed the man a ten-euro note, and as the clerk was counting out change he asked Brodie, “British? American?”
“Canadian,” he replied as he always did to that question. Everyone liked Canadians.
The man nodded and gestured to the folded-up paper on the counter. “The Russians.”
Brodie did not respond.
“Fucking Putin. He wants no trust between people. And so”—he jabbed the paper—“make it look like Muslim terrorist. Yes?”
Jackpot. A new theory, straight from the Berlin street. “Clever,” said Brodie.
The man seemed happy to have an audience and leaned across the counter. “The Russen have their testicles everywhere.”
“Excuse me?”
“Like octopus. Reaching all over. The white nationalists. The German military, the Bundestag, big corporations. They want to rip Germany in two parts again. Do you see this?”
“Yes,” said Brodie. “They won’t get away with it.”
“Of course they will!”
“Okay. Well, that’s too bad—”
“We have become weak and stupid. We have it coming.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Auf Wiedersehen.”
Brodie took the paper and scooped up the change, and he and Taylor headed toward a stairway that led down to the street.
