“That strudel will still be on the conference table.”
She smiled. “Good night.” She entered her room and Brodie watched the door slowly shut behind her, which also closed the door on any more reckless choices and excitement for the night. But there was always tomorrow.
Brodie walked into his room and switched on the lights, tossed off his coat, and chugged a couple of glasses of water from the tap. He realized that he needed to update Dombroski, which was the last thing he felt like doing. He’d had maybe three hours of sleep in the last thirty-six and was ready to crash. He’d make it short.
He sat on the edge of the bed and called the colonel, who picked up after one ring. “Good evening, Mr. Brodie.”
“Good evening, sir.”
“It’s late there.”
“Yes, sir. It has been a long and productive night.”
“I want to hear about it. But first, I spoke with Colonel Trask a few hours ago, he’s giving us Vance and Jenkins’ CID reports from the past eighteen months. He’s securely transmitting them to the Defense Attaché Office in the embassy, where you can retrieve them tomorrow when you go for your briefing. Minimal redactions. Hopefully some good reading.”
“I’m glad the Fifth MP is being cooperative.”
“They want this done right. And I assured Colonel Trask that I had my two best agents on the case.”
“Thank you for your confidence and your compliment.”
“I want Scott Brodie’s ego workingforme, not against me.” He added, “Update me on your progress.”
“I think we found out what Vance was doing here in Neukölln. He waslooking for a military Intel officer in Saddam Hussein’s special warfare program who immigrated to Germany after the war. Guy named Tariq Qasim.”
“Who told you this?”
“A Lebanese mobster, name of Rafeeq Nasir.”
“And how did you get in contact with this gentleman?”
“He found us. Long story. Nasir claims he’s helping us because he wants this case wrapped up quickly so that the cops-to-robbers ratio in his neighborhood goes down.”
“How did you come to this man’s attention? Just being your discreet self?”
He told Dombroski about his visit to the Al Mahdi Islamic Center, and being subsequently followed by Hasan, as well as Vance’s original visit there. He also told Dombroski about the man Faruk whom they’d questioned at the hookah lounge. “So, Vance goes to this mosque looking for former Iraqi Ba’athists—and, according to my underworld source, he went to a handful of other mosques in the area as well—then he gets a name and number from Rafeeq Nasir, then gets in touch with this Iraqi guy Tariq Qasim, apparently arranges a meeting at the hookah lounge, and… Qasim doesn’t show, and Harry goes for a walk through the park, or the guy changes the meeting place to the park instead of the lounge. Either way, sounds like a setup.”
“It also sounds like we have a suspect. Tariq Qasim.”
“Right. The problem is Qasim has disappeared.”
“He’s fled.”
“Or he’s dead. Nasir believes that whoever killed Harry also killed Qasim.”
“Is that a theory of his? Or did he personally wrap piano wire around the guy’s neck?”
“I don’t think he’s involved beyond what he told us. Otherwise he took too big of a risk revealing himself to us.”
“Maybe he’s an idiot who thought he was being clever. There’s a lot of that going around.”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
Dombroski thought about that. “You were face-to-face with Mr. Nasir, so I trust your instincts. But I’m sure the German authorities will be labeling him a person of interest.”
“I’m sure. But I don’t want to get off track. This Iraqi guy is the key.Tariq Qasim. After he came to Germany, he changed his name to Abbas al-Hamdani. We need to find out more about him.” Brodie reminded Dombroski, “Tariq Qasim was involved with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.”
“All right. I’ll run both those names by a couple Intel guys I trust with experience in Iraq, see if anything comes back.”
