Brodie lay in silence, listening to the rain and the wind and the sporadic sounds of cars and motorbikes, and the occasional revelers on the street below as the night wound down in the short hours before dawn. And as he drifted off, he reminded himself of something he had learned long ago: The dead can speak. You just have to know how to listen.
CHAPTER 19
Brodie and Taylor left the Art Hotel at 8:30A.M.and headed toward Karl-Marx Straße, where they could get a taxi to the embassy.
A cold wind blew the damp, misty air under a slate-gray sky. Another perfect day in Berlin. Brodie asked, “Did you remember your sunscreen?”
She smiled. “I applied motor oil so I don’t rust.”
They stopped at a café on Karl-Marx to get two black coffees to go, then they left the café and walked along the wide avenue, burning off some alcohol and replacing it with caffeine.
Brodie said, “Vance and Jenkins’ CID case files have been transmitted from the Fifth MP Battalion to the Defense Attaché Office, where we can retrieve a printout.”
“How do you know that?”
“I called Dombroski last night.”
She looked annoyed. “I expect to be present when you speak to him.”
“I realized I needed to call him after we got to our rooms.” He added, “I would have knocked on your door, but you looked tired.”
She was silent for a moment, then started to reply just as a booming sound thundered from somewhere, and Brodie felt the sidewalk shake.
He looked at Taylor, who stared back at him.
A few cars slowed down, and pedestrians stopped walking and looked around apprehensively before continuing on their way—likely coming up with a mundane explanation for whatever that loud noise was. No one expects to hear an explosion during morning rush hour, but Brodie and Taylor knew this sound, which was the same all over the world.
They dropped their coffees and ran across the four-lane road and downa side street toward where the blast had come from. The sounds of chaos grew louder: Tires screeching. Honking cars. A man shouting something in Arabic. A woman screaming.
They rounded a corner onto a narrow street lined with tightly packed residential buildings and storefronts.
A block ahead of them, a five-story apartment building was billowing smoke and fire from its top floor. Most of the top story was gone, and the pitched tile roof sagged. Rubble and shards of glass were scattered across the sidewalk and the street, which was choked with stopped cars. Ash drifted onto pedestrians staring up at the huge column of fire and smoke that rose into the gray sky.
As Brodie and Taylor continued and got closer to the site of the blast, they spotted a middle-aged Arab woman sitting on the curb, her hand over her bloodstained hijab, and a scattering of debris around her. A young German man was crouching next to her while speaking urgently into his cell phone.
Taylor approached the woman and spoke to her in Arabic. The woman seemed dazed but responded. Taylor laid the woman down on the sidewalk, took her pulse, and listened to her breathing, then turned to Brodie. “Sounds okay.” She moved the woman’s hand away from her head, and pulled back the hijab to reveal a bloody gash across her forehead. Taylor replaced the hijab over the wound.
The young man said in English, “Ambulance. Five minutes.”
“Can you stay with her until it arrives?”
“Yes.”
Taylor took the man’s hand and placed it over the bleeding wound. “Pressure. Okay?”
He nodded. “Okay.”
They continued toward the building. Two Berlin Police officers were now on the scene, as frightened residents ran out of the flaming building. Emergency service sirens were wailing in the distance.
When they were about twenty yards from the blast site, a black police van screeched up and five cops wearing helmets and body armor piled out, carrying assault rifles. Two policemen flanked the door to the apartment building while the others went to get drivers back in their cars so theycould clear the street and close it off. The two cops at the door entered the building.
Brodie looked at the smoking building. Almost the entire fifth-floor façade had blown off, and the roof, sitting on unanchored rafters, looked like it could collapse any minute and slide into the street.
Through the missing façade Brodie could see part of the destroyed apartment, blackened from the blast. An overturned metal desk sat near the edge of the hole, its legs twisted and deformed. He thought he saw a charred arm sticking out from the opening.
A uniformed Berlin Police officer stepped in front of them and raised a gloved hand. “Halt. Wir schließen den Bereich.”
They stopped walking as another cop wrapped police tape between street signs to cordon off the area.
