They walked to the door and Brodie said, “Tactical exit.” Taylor told him the license plate number of their car, and he opened the door while she stayed behind.
Out in the frigid air, Brodie checked out the dimly lit street, his hand in his pocket. The Uber idled at the curb, and a few other vehicles were parked, but looked empty. No sign of their Arab Tony Soprano or his friends.
He gave the bar door two raps, signaling all-clear, then went to the taxi and opened the rear passenger door as Taylor came out and headed for the open door.
As she slid in and over, Brodie slid in beside her, pulling the door closed.
The driver, who appeared Middle Eastern, looked at his smartphone to confirm the destination. “Körnerpark?”
“Ja,” said Taylor.
The taxi moved off.
Taylor said to Brodie, “I compliment you on your good security and good judgment.”
Brodie replied, “But when the bad guys make you change how you live, they win.”
“They also win when they kill you.”
They rode in silence, and the dark streets of Berlin glided by out the window. As they approached Körnerpark and the Art Hotel, Brodie asked the driver, “English?”
The man replied, “Little.”
“East side of Körnerpark, bitte. Wittmannsdorfer Straße.”
The driver nodded.
Taylor said to Brodie, “I’d pinned the south side. Closest to our hotel, which is where we’re going.”
“I want to walk through the park. We haven’t surveyed it at night.”
“You can sleep in the park for all I care. I’m going to the hotel.”
The driver said, “Man killed in park. American.” He added, “But park safe.”
“Sounds safe,” said Brodie. “Where are you from?”
“Syria. Not safe.”
“It’s all relative.”
“Yes? Where you go?”
Brodie looked at Taylor, who stayed silent. She was tired, and probably also tired of her partner’s bullshit. But after a moment she said to the driver, “East side of the park. Wittmannsdorfer Straße.”
They pulled up on the side street at the east end of the park and got out.
They walked to the wrought-iron fence and looked down into Körnerpark. They were standing in roughly the same spot that Captain Soliman believed the killer had stood for his kill shot. As Brodie had noted earlier, there was no streetlamp nearby. And now, looking down into the park at night, Brodie appreciated how dark the area was where Vance had been standing when he was shot. Perhaps he’d chosen that spot deliberately, as it was a distance from any of the streetlamps that lined the park’s paved pathways. If so, it was a gesture toward operational security, but not nearly good enough. Especially against a trained marksman with a night vision scope.
Taylor stood next to Brodie and looked down into the dark greenery. She said, “Harry Vance was working a secret investigation in the days before his murder, an investigation that somehow involved Iraqi immigrants and maybe Saddam Hussein’s military intelligence apparatus and WMD programs. Maybe someone was selling secrets. Or, God forbid, a few dozen vials of anthrax. But Vance told no one. Why?”
“So you’re choosing to believe Nasir?”
Taylor handed him her phone, which featured what appeared to be a surveillance photo of Rafeeq Nasir getting out of a black Mercedes.
Taylor said, “He is who he said he is. Heads the third-largest Arab crime family in Berlin. He’s indirectly implicated in five unsolved homicides.” She added, “Tonight could have gone differently.”
“Right. I could have not gone to the Al Mahdi Center, and not shaken something out of the tree, and then we would not have received vital Intel that completely reframes this case.”
