Brodie nodded. “Leave a big tip and let’s get out of here.”
Taylor put a fifty-euro note on the table and they left the hookah lounge. As they walked north along Karl-Marx Straße, Brodie gave Taylor the rundown of his conversation with Faruk.
She said, “So we’ve moved on from terrorism to organized crime.”
“I’m not so sure there’s a bright line between them.”
Taylor nodded. “In my preparation for this case I did some reading on the Arab clans. That’s what they call them. Most of the families came here as refugees of the civil war in Lebanon during the seventies and eighties. Some trace their lineage back to parts of Turkey, and they are almost exclusively Sunni.”
“So, they might not be involved in financing Shia militia that are friendly to Iran.”
“I’m not sure how religious they are. If money is to be made, maybe they don’t care. You and I don’t really understand this world and we should be careful about our assumptions.”
“There’s a lot of moving parts here,” said Brodie. “And we don’t even know the names of the parts.”
They continued along Karl-Marx Straße. Taylor said, “Well, we’ve discovered something new. But I don’t feel we’re any closer to finding the killer.”
“We’re not,” Brodie assured her. “But we’ve reconstructed Harry’s movements and times from the U-Bahn, to Ember Berlin, to Körnerpark, where his journey ended.”
“Why did he stop at Ember Berlin?”
“If we had his cell phone we might know.”
“Why was he here? In Berlin. In this neighborhood?”
“Anna knows why.”
“We need to find her.”
“We are hot on her trail. Consider her found.”
“I can see why some people mistake your self-assuredness for monumental arrogance.”
“They don’t know me like you do, Maggie.”
She had no response to that and asked, “You still want to go to Proletariat?”
“Why not?”
“Based on Vance’s timeline, he couldn’t have stopped there before or after Ember Berlin.”
“But he may have been there on another night. Also, we need a drink. And the Art Hotel has no bar.”
“I have that bottle of schnapps in my room.”
Brodie hesitated. Was she offering just schnapps? Or schnapps with a chaser?
“Scott?”
“Let’s stick to the plan.”
“Okay…”
They continued on in silence.
CHAPTER 17
Brodie and Taylor found themselves in a quiet residential neighborhood, somewhere east of Karl-Marx Straße. Taylor glanced at her cell phone, then up at a nondescript gray stucco building, covered with graffiti, and saw the street number stenciled above the steel door. There seemed to be no proprietary name on the building, but Brodie spotted a piece of spray-painted graffiti that said,PROLETARIAT, which he brought to Taylor’s attention. “Here it is. Right above ‘Peace, love, and kill the capitalists.’?”
