“Thank you, sir.”
“Anything else?”
He told the colonel about their excursion in Prenzlauer Berg, and the woman named Anna whom they were going to try to find tomorrow with the help of the metro surveillance footage.
“You’ve been busy, Scott. Almost a Teutonic work ethic.”
“Must be something in the water.” He added, “I get the sense that we are sometimes walking in the German investigator’s footsteps.” He mentioned Fatima, the eyewitness they’d located earlier in the day, who had already spoken with the police, and also the cops who had already paid visits to the Vietnamese noodle shop and the hookah lounge. “None of this was mentioned in the briefing. Nor was the fact that the authorities were already aware of Harry’s visit to the Al Mahdi Islamic Center.”
Dombroski processed that. “This is a complex investigation, and the Germans have multiple agencies on this. Multiple streams of Intel. I’m not surprised there’s a bottleneck in disseminating information.”
“That’s a very generous interpretation, sir.”
“Listen, Scott. I know you, and I know you like to keep your cards close to the chest until you have a winning hand. But that’s not the game you’re playing. You have gone well beyond your mandate, but you’ve also got a lot to show for it, which should mitigate some of the fallout with the FBI and the Germans. You share what you know, as you learn it, and without conditions. This is about justice for Harry Vance. Not about you.”
“I don’t need to be reminded of that, Colonel.”
“But you do need to be reminded not to get hung up on process with these people, because they are bound to disappoint you and piss you off. That’s baked into the cake.”
“I understand.”
Dombroski asked, “And how is Ms. Taylor?”
“Doing a good job.”
“And you’re working well together?”
“We are.”
“Anything further?”
“Nothing further.”
Dombroski was silent a moment. “It sounds like you’re back in the shit, Scott. Right where you want to be.”
“Trouble has a way of finding me, sir.”
“I think it’s because you paint a target on your ass.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get some rest, Mr. Brodie.” Dombroski hung up.
Brodie set an alarm on his phone, then plugged it in on the end table, threw off his clothes, and hit the lights. He collapsed onto the cheap mattress and stared up at the abstract art above the bed, which looked a little better in the dark. Outside, the mist had turned into rain that pattered against the window.
He closed his eyes and imagined the man he remembered, Chief Warrant Officer Harry Vance. He was in front of the class at the Army MP School in Fort Leonard Wood, discussing the organizational structure of terrorist cells. His lecturing style was always a bit dry, almost aloof. But he didn’t need to try hard to make his students care about what he was saying. There were killers out there who could strike anywhere at any time, and the guy at the front of the room was giving the eager agents-in-training the tools for stopping them.
Brodie took this vision of the man and put him on a five-hour train across Germany to see a woman named Anna, who was maybe the love of his life, or maybe just a diversion from a failed marriage. He imagined them walking around picturesque Prenzlauer Berg, shopping for small-batch schnapps.
Brodie then pictured Vance knocking on doors of mosques throughout Neukölln pretending to be a journalist. Sitting in a hookah lounge waiting to meet a man with intimate knowledge of the deadliest weapons ever made. Descending into a dark city park in the last moments of his life. The shot. The fall. A figure descending the steps, a sharp object in hand, coming to collect a gruesome trophy…An eye for an eye.
The relationship with Anna wasn’t a cover for the investigation, and theinvestigation wasn’t a cover for the relationship. Both were well-kept secrets. So maybe both were part of the same thing.
You’re not solving a puzzle. You’re defusing a bomb.
Vance had said that about his own work in counterterror in the post-9/11 era, where the crimes and atrocities existed on a continuum, one following the next. While Harry Vance gathered evidence and testimony and looked for suspects on a case, the next attack was in the nascent stages of being executed. Vance’s caseload wasn’t a ledger of unrelated crimes—it was a timeline of attacks and attempted attacks in a generational war.
And now, maybe that war had come here, to Berlin. And as Brodie and Taylor sought justice for their colleague, they also had to pick up his fallen sword and carry on. Brodie wished his old teacher could give him some clues.
