“I don’t believe in any of that,” said Anna. “There is justice in this world or none at all.”
Taylor took Anna’s phone number and gave her both of their cell numbers; then they left the apartment and walked down the stairs and out to the street. A light flurry had begun, and the flakes were collecting on the cobblestones.
Taylor said, “Well, that was… something…”
Brodie nodded. “Good info. Wrong case.”
Taylor asked, “What did you think of her?”
“Before or after she threatened to blow my head off?”
“She showed restraint, actually. And a fair amount of trust in people who had just broken into her apartment.”
“Maybe that’s her fatal flaw. Overly trusting. Maybe Harry was snowing her about trying to find her father’s killer. Stringing her along.”
“Do you think he would do that?”
“I didn’t know him well enough to say. But he seemed like an honest guy.”
“Except for the extramarital affair.”
“If nothing else, he was earnest. And diligent. Maybe he’d managed to dig into old Stasi archives or even U.S. counterintelligence reports to try to discover Odin’s identity. But is that why he was in a park in the middle ofthe night in an Arab neighborhood holding his Beretta? I doubt it. But we’ll look at the Stasi report.”
His phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw it was Sharon Whitmore. He answered, “Brodie.”
“Scott, when can you be at the embassy?”
“Fifteen minutes. Why?”
“There’s been a major development.”
“Can I get a tease?”
She hesitated a moment. “The bombing in Neukölln has provided some new evidence.”
“See you soon.”
“Good.” She hung up.
Brodie slipped the phone back in his pocket. He watched as the snow drifted past the old buildings and the bare trees lining the sidewalk.Two remarkable events separated by a few days and a few blocks. Maybe it wasn’t chaos after all. Maybe there was some awful unifying logic to all this.
“Who was that?”
“Whitmore. She needs us at the embassy ASAP. The bombing in Neukölln has led to new evidence in our case.”
“Well, at least they’re calling it a bombing, and not a cooking accident.” She looked off, thinking. After a moment she said, “Last night I felt like this case was almost making sense.”
“Whiskey will do that.”
“And then there’s this.” She gestured to Anna’s building. “What does an American spying for the Stasi have to do with Iraqi military intelligence, or weapons of mass destruction, or now this bombing?”
“Don’t forget Hezbollah and the Lebanese Mafia.” He added, “Anna is paranoid. Grief-stricken. Harry’s death stirred up a lot of things that she thought she’d buried.”
“The hysterical woman.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s implied.”
