“Like a bomb went off inside a top-floor apartment,” said Taylor.
Kim nodded as he thought about that.
Brodie said, “Maybe it was Hezbollah.”
Kim looked at him. “I know you’re being facetious, Scott, but it did cross my mind. They like to use remote bombs to carry out assassinations.”
Brodie pointed out, “But if you’ve already gained access to your victim’s apartment, why bother with a bomb?”
“Terrorists like to make grand statements. You know that.”
“Right.”
Kim thought, then said, “The Weather Underground. Remember them?”
Taylor replied, “Way before I was born.”
“Greenwich Village bombing—1970.”
Brodie nodded. As the son of hippies who had lived in the Village in the sixties and seventies, Brodie knew all about the Weather Underground, a left-wing terrorist group who accidentally blew up a townhouse in the Village while making a bomb that killed three of their own. “So, you think Jihadi Johnny wasn’t paying attention in bomb-making class and accidentally connected the yellow wire instead of the red one?”
“Maybe. It depends on IDing the blood and guts that the forensic squad is collecting in mortal remains bags.”
“Thank you for that image,” said Brodie. “We’re due at the Defense Attaché Office, so let’s walk and talk.”
As they walked across the lobby toward the elevators, Kim said, “I guess you saw the psychos out front.”
“Scott almost started a fight with one of them,” said Taylor, in a tone that was neither accusatory nor affirmative.
“I would have liked to see that. The Germans are in major denial about their white nationalist problem. It makes a lot of them uncomfortable, for obvious reasons.”
They reached the elevator and Taylor punched the call button. She said, “Maybe it’s best to deprive them of attention. Keep them marginalized.”
Kim shook his head. “Too late for that. They’re in the Bundestag, for God’s sake. They’re also in the military. And the BKA. And the police. And that’s just the public-facing institutions. Every year they get a little bolder. A little more willing to say out loud what they used to say in private.”
Brodie observed, “There’s a lot of that going around.”
Kim nodded and continued, “Their trend toward radicalization isn’t that different from the jihadists, really. We’ve got over a decade of social media now that’s foisting garbage into people’s brains, increasing social alienation and atomization, and inciting incidents that draw new people into the movement. In this case, the murder of Harry Vance, U.S. Army officer.”
The elevator arrived and Brodie hit the button for the third floor. As the doors slid shut Brodie asked Kim, “Does the name Tariq Qasim mean anything to you?”
Kim thought for a moment. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“What about Abbas al-Hamdani?”
“No. Who are they?”
“Same guy. Tariq Qasim took the name Abbas al-Hamdani when he moved from Iraq to Germany sometime after the fall of Saddam. He was in Saddam’s special warfare program, a.k.a. weapons of mass destruction.”
“Now you’re making me nervous.”
“Maybe we should all be,” said Taylor. “Harry Vance was looking to meet Tariq Qasim in the days before his death. And now Qasim is missing.”
The doors opened and they stepped into a wide hallway as a young man and woman in suits walked by and stepped into a nearby office. Brodie and Taylor gave Kim a rundown of their encounter with Rafeeq Nasir and the information he’d provided. Kim listened, but said nothing.
Brodie asked, “What do you know about the Arab clans?”
“Nothing,” said Kim. “Which means they don’t have anything to do with me or terrorism.”
