Whitmore looked again at her notes. “Several weapons were recovered from the apartment. Among them was a Heckler and Koch MP5 semi-automatic submachine gun with a night vision scope. This particular weapon had been converted for use with twenty-two long rifle rounds. Captain So-liman’s team is running ballistics to determine if it was the rifle used to kill Mr. Vance, though he seemed confident they will discover that it was. And I share his confidence.”
Taylor asked, “How can you be so sure?”
Whitmore looked at her. “Because of the other piece of evidence that they recovered. In the apartment freezer was a glass jar that contained a human eyeball.”
The briefing room was silent as they absorbed what Whitmore had just said. There was physical evidence—the photos—linking the three dead men to the murder victim’s partner, Mark Jenkins, and there was a potential murder weapon, and potential forensic evidence of the murder victim himself. The eyeball. Assuming the ballistics and genetic testing didn’t offer up any surprises, this was case closed. Except, of course, for discovering motive and possible co-conspirators.
Taylor asked, “Do you have anything on these three Syrians?”
Whitmore replied, “They all emigrated from the city of Idlib in northwestern Syria. For most of the Syrian civil war and up to today, Idlib has been under the control of various Sunni extremist rebel groups, many of which have ties to al Qaeda. Inspector Schröder informed me that refugees from this particular part of Syria receive increased scrutiny and screening by the German government during the asylum application process. The authorities are currently looking further into these men’s recent activities as well as their backgrounds, including—with the aid of our Defense Department—any connection that these individuals may have had to past or ongoing criminal investigations within Army CID or other American military law enforcement entities. Meanwhile, Berlin PD is canvassing Neukölln and questioning residents about the movements of these menin the last few days and weeks, as well as any known associations they may have had with radical groups.”
She paused for a moment and looked between Brodie and Taylor. “The working theory is that a Sunni extremist group has chosen to assassinate American counterterrorism agents in Germany—and possibly Mr. Vance and Mr. Jenkins in particular—as revenge for some particular law enforcement action.”
Brodie thought about that. Sunni extremists such as al Qaeda were the mortal enemies of Shi’ite terror groups like Hezbollah, which meant Agent Kim’s favorite theory had just gone up in smoke along with the suspects. Hopefully he’d taken it okay.
On that subject, Brodie asked, “Why are we being briefed separately from Agent Kim?”
Whitmore pursed her lips. “Agent Kim is a CT expert with a top secret security clearance, and I wanted him to be able to speak freely to me about any intelligence that might inform this case without concern for what was being shared outside of the Bureau.”
The FBI liked to keep it in the family. So did the Army. But on a case like this you were at least supposed to pretend that civilian and military law enforcement were one big happy family. Or at least related by marriage. Agent Whitmore appeared to be dropping the pretense.
“Speaking of Agent Kim,” said Jason Butler, who seemed to have been waiting for his cue, “he asked us to give this to you.” He slid a manila envelope across the conference table. “The FBI file on Tariq Qasim, a.k.a. Abbas al-Hamdani.”
Taylor took the envelope. “Agent Kim has set a good example for interagency cooperation.”
Whitmore, who was not setting a good example, did not reply.
Butler said, “Makes for interesting reading. Qasim was a colonel in the Iraqi Army, a military Intel guy who helped coordinate and execute Saddam’s nerve gas attacks against the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War in the eighties. Not much other info on him until after the 2003 American invasion, when he was the leader of an insurgent cell focused on killing his own people—Iraqi civilians who worked with the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. These terrorist activities are the reason Qasim was in our database in the firstplace. He switched sides a couple years later and joined the Sunni Awakening, which, as you may know, worked for us.” He added, “I assume this is the only reason a guy with such a murderous background was granted asylum here in Germany.”
Brodie knew of the Sunni Awakening—otherwise known as the Sons of Iraq—who were a coalition of Sunni tribes paid by the U.S. military to fight and kill the al Qaeda jihadists within their communities. They were mostly led by tribal elders as well as guys like Tariq Qasim—former officers in Saddam’s military who saw an opportunity to switch to the winning team and get paid in the process.
Members of the Awakening were, unsurprisingly, marked for death by al Qaeda and their cohorts, who saw them as traitors to their sect and collaborators with the American infidels. It wasn’t difficult for Brodie to imagine how a man like Qasim could secure asylum in the West as a political refugee. War criminals are bad until they’re on your payroll, doing your bidding. And now Brodie wondered if Qasim had switched sides yet again and gotten himself involved with a Sunni extremist cell here in Germany that was assassinating American military counterterrorism agents.
Butler looked at Brodie and Taylor. “Do you have any idea why Mr. Vance would have been seeking this man out?”
“No,” said Taylor. “We were hoping the FBI file would shed some light.”
“It didn’t to us, nor to Agent Kim. We shared a copy of Qasim’s file with the BKA as well as with Mark Jenkins, who was not familiar with the names Tariq Qasim or his alias, Abbas al-Hamdani.”
Whitmore added, “It is possible that Colonel Qasim had an operational connection to these Syrian bomb-makers, and that all of them were somehow related to an investigation that Mr. Vance was conducting without the knowledge or authorization of his commanding officer. It is also possible that Qasim has nothing to do with our investigation, and that you were given inaccurate information by your source, perhaps intentionally.” She added, unnecessarily, “That’s done all the time.”
Jason Butler said to Brodie and Taylor, “Agent Kim explained to us the circumstances through which you obtained this name. At first I thought maybe Kim was making a joke, or you were BSing him.”
“You might not like our methods,” said Brodie, “but we don’t trade in bullshit.”
Butler ignored that. “I looked into this Rafeeq Nasir. You’re both lucky to be alive.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it.”
Jason Butler leaned forward and clasped his hands together on the table, which he’d probably seen an FBI interrogator do on television. “What we want to know is, why would this Mr. Nasir help you? Why call attention to himself in the first place? And why should we trust anything he has to say?”
“We got on his radar,” said Brodie. “And he wanted to know who was poking around his neighborhood. And he wants it to stop. Bad for business. If we hadn’t been CID agents then maybe, as you suggested, we’d be dead. Who knows? And, frankly, at this point who cares? We got Intel, and we have now shared it with our good friends at the Bureau.”
“It is difficult,” said Whitmore, “to isolate this information from the source.” She added, “And the extraordinarily reckless fashion in which it was acquired. I’m surprised that you believed any of what Rafeeq Nasir told you.”
Brodie looked at Sharon Whitmore, who was staring back at him. This woman was hard to read. After a moment, she dropped the bomb: “We are concerned that your conduct is negatively impacting this investigation.”
And now Brodie understood why General Kiernan wasn’t here, and why David Kim had been briefed separately. When you’re getting ready to shiv someone, it’s best not to have any of their potential allies in the room.
