Nasir reminded her, “Your friend here came to the Islamic center. Under false pretenses.”
Taylor did not reply, but Brodie could hear her thinking,That wasn’t my fucking idea.
Brodie said to Nasir, “You’re on.”
He nodded and looked at them. “As I said, my name is Rafeeq Nasir. If you were from around here, that name would mean a great deal to you. I have prominence in this community, and my people rely on me.” He added, “The murder of Mr. Vance has made a lot of people nervous and is bad for business. Well, maybe not your business. What are you? FBI? American Army?”
Brodie regarded the man. Mr. Nasir seemed eager to tell them what he knew, and when a guy is eager to sell, he’ll settle for scraps in return. Unless he was about to feed them bullshit, in which case you get what you pay for. Brodie said, “Army CID.”
“May I see your identification?”
“I’m not asking to see yours. Don’t ask to see mine.”
Nasir smiled and said something in Arabic to Hasan, who did not appear to find any of this funny. They exchanged a few words, and once again Brodie relied on his partner to discern whether the men were discussing how best to kill the Americans and chop up their bodies.
Nasir turned back to them and said, “It will be easy for me to find your names on my own, but to be honest it is not so important.” He gestured to Hasan. “My friend here, he is a good man. A pious man. And like any good Muslim he is ready to help a stranger in need.” He looked at Brodie. “Even those who come to a place of worship with words of deceit.” He then patted Hasan’s arm to signal for the man to talk.
Hasan cleared his throat and looked at Brodie and Taylor. He spoke inslow, halting English: “I saw this man, Harry Vance. He come to our center on Thursday. He speak to the imam. He give a different name. Say he is a writer… a reporter. He is looking for Iraqis who come to live in Berlin after the war in Iraq.”
Well, that confirmed Brodie’s suspicion that Harry had been to the Al Mahdi Center. But… Iraqi refugees? What was that about?
Hasan continued, “I hear of this. I am from Iraq, I come here to live in 2006. I call Mr. Vance, he asks me questions about myself. Where I am from. What I do in Iraq before Germany. He tells me he look for Ba’ath people… Saddam’s people… who come to Berlin after the war.”
Brodie considered that. Saddam Hussein was dead, his Ba’ath Party had been dissolved, and most Iraqis who had held any prominence within the regime had been killed in battle, thrown in jail, or sent straight to Hell through a hangman’s noose.
Nasir stepped in. “Hasan does not know these kinds of men. But he knows Rafeeq Nasir, and I know everyone. Wishing to be helpful to the American, Hasan comes to me. But I am not so trusting. I want to know what this American wants. I had also heard that he had gone to other mosques in the neighborhood—Sunni mosques—with the same request. So I call Mr. Vance to find out what he really wants. He tells me something about writing a story on the legacy of the war, or something. Whatever. All bullshit anyway, yes? This I could tell. He was a detective, like you, trying to get information.”
“How could you be so sure?” asked Taylor.
Nasir looked at her. “I have talked to police and I have talked to reporters, and I can tell the difference.”
Well, thought Brodie, being undercover wasn’t really Harry Vance’s area of expertise. His routine was good enough to work on the civilians at the Al Mahdi Center, but not on a shrewd denizen of the criminal underworld.
Nasir continued, “I told Mr. Vance I knew a few people who fit this description—former Iraqi Ba’ath Party men who had resettled in Germany—but I needed to understand more about what he was working on before I would be willing to share their identities. He eventually got to the point of what he was really looking for—not political people, but former military or intelligence officers from Saddam’s regime. And then I understood thatMr. Vance was looking for aparticularman, a former Ba’ath Party military intelligence officer who he knew lived in Berlin and perhaps in Neukölln.”
“How did you come to that conclusion?” asked Brodie.
“Because I knew of a man who fit this description, living in Neukölln, who had taken a new identity since immigrating. I think Mr. Vance had learned that this man lived in Berlin, and that he had changed his name, and Mr. Vance was trying to locate this Iraqi under his new identity.” He added, “So I gave Mr. Vance the name. And three days later, Mr. Vance is dead.”
Taylor asked, “Who is this man?”
“His real name was Tariq Qasim. The rumors were that he worked in military intelligence for Saddam’s special warfare program.” He looked at Brodie. “You understand?”
Brodie gave a slight nod.Special warfare. Which meant biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. He didn’t know why Harry was looking for Tariq Qasim, but this case had suddenly taken on a new and more frightening dimension.
Nasir added, “After Saddam was overthrown, Qasim came here and changed his name to Abbas al-Hamdani. He started a new life. He had a shoe store a few blocks from here. So I gave Mr. Vance his cell phone number.”
Brodie wondered if this was all an elaborate lie to gum up the investigation. But if Rafeeq Nasir was involved with Vance’s murder, he was taking an enormous risk in having this encounter just to drop some bullshit in the pipeline.
Brodie asked, “Why are you helping us?”
“I don’t like dead Americans in my neighborhood. There are police every-where now. Also the right-wing Germans who threaten my people with violence. I want you to solve this case, and quickly.” He smiled and added, “You can tell the German investigators how helpful Rafeeq Nasir was to you.”
Actually, the Germans might decide that Rafeeq Nasir was suspect number one. But the man seemed confident in his story—even if it was part bullshit—and confident he was not going to get pegged for this murder.
Taylor asked, “If you knew Harry Vance was law enforcement, why did you help him and reveal al-Hamdani’s identity?”
Nasir shrugged. “Hamdani owed me money. So I owed him nothing.”
