“He's never been overtly anti-Semitic, Wally.”
“No German politician can be and survive. Voekl says the right things. But the language is a sort of code, Caroline. Attack the outsider even if it's the Muslims this time and sooner or later, you'll catch up with the Jews.”
Caroline winced.
“Did she take your kids?”
He nodded, gaze fixed on the wet asphalt rippling in the headlights.
“The apartment's like a mausoleum.”
Brenda was important to Wally, but his two boys were his reasons to live.
“That must be tough,” Caroline said.
He shrugged.
“We call each other a lot. And my tour's up in eighteen months. Look, I'm starving. Why don't we grab something and head back to my place?”
“Something” turned out to be wurst from a kosher deli in the Scheunenviertel, the old Jewish quarter of Berlin where Wally had an apartment in a converted nineteenth-century town house. They ate brown bread, dense and nutty, and soft German cheese with the wurst. Wally drank dark beer. They sat on a faded velvet sofa in his high-ceilinged living room and talked of inconsequential things people they knew and hadn't seen in months, recipes for a true Hungarian gulyas, Brenda's practice in the Maryland suburbs. And when the insistent edge of Caroline's hunger had been muted, she wiped her fingers on a paper napkin and sat back to enjoy Wally's wine.
“So do you sweep this place?” she asked, casting her eyes up to the ceiling.
“Every day, with the best possible broom,” he replied. “It's clean. As far as I can tell.”
“No coincidences?”
“None that are more than coincidences. You can talk, Mad Dog.”
“Where do I start, Wally?”
He held her gaze impassively.
“First, tell me why you're here.”
Her pulse throbbed. Don't look like you've got something to hide, she thought.
Wally always knows. Wally was born a spy. She forced a rueful smile. “I'm here because Jack Bigelow is desperate and I happened to write a bio he actually read. The President seems to think a mere analyst can pull Sophie Payne out of a hat. I can't begin to tell you what I'm expected to do. I don't know myself.”
“Then I propose you sit back and watch Tom Shephard.”
“The LegAtt?”
“He's in charge on the ground. You monitor his moves and wait for information. That seems to be what analysts are most comfortable with. Watching and waiting.”
Caroline's smile deepened.
“How you cowboys despise us!”
“Not me,” Wally protested. “I've got nothing but respect for the Headquarters won ks It's just not who I am. I need… to make decisions faster. I need to act. Even if what I do turns out to be wrong. You analysts demand so much certainty, you know? Before you're willing to move off a dime.”
Certainty, Caroline thought. It had nothing to do with the shadow world of Intelligence. Intelligence was predictive. Intelligence was fact spurred by instinct, a wing flying on a prayer. Wally was right. Analysts were too damn obsessed with their own security. Too concerned with getting it right to say anything at all.
But time and facts were two things she lacked in the midst of Eric's disaster.
She'd have to clutch at the puzzle pieces before they materialized, trust her gut as well as her brain.
“Not that I mean you, Caroline,” Wally amended, “I remember Mad Dog. I know what you're capable of. A threat and a grenade, right when it counts. Now that's, moving off a dime.”
Mad Dog. A trickle of adrenaline, recalled from the past, floated down Caroline's spine. Had she ever been quite so reckless, so determined, so insane as her nickname would suggest?
She had. She had never forgotten what drove her during the months of counterterrorism training, nor how the momentary madness had felt. That knowledge was like an uneasy knife pricking at her brain. The force she could not control. Her demon.
She shook off Wally's words and said, “Who've you got working the terrorist account?”
“In the station? Fred Leicester. You know Fred?”
“The name. We've never crossed paths.”
“He was out trolling the streets today in the hope of turning up a lead.”
In a plumber's van full of electronics, probably. Leicester had gone through six months of tradecraft training at the Farm with Eric, tailing unsuspecting tourists through the streets of Williamsburg, Virginia. What she knew of Fred took about twenty words to say: He was a well-meaning putz. He believed the CIA was the free world's last, best hope. And his tradecraft was shit. Fred was persona non grata waiting to happen, the worst fate that could be visited on a case officer's career. When you were PNG'd, the world took notice. Your diplomatic immunity was stripped and you were exposed as a spy in your host country's newspapers. You went home in disgrace, your cover permanently blown. And in most cases, you never worked abroad again.
“Fred is the one developing our girl in the VaccuGen office,” Wally said. “And he follows the local Palestinians. There's always a floating crap game where the rag heads are concerned. Paul — the kid you met today — does a few jobs now and then. Dead drops, brush passes .. . It'll never be Berlin in the Cold War, but its good experience.”
“So you've got some terrorist assets here.”
“Not a whole lot to speak of.” Even with Caroline, Wally operated on a need-to-know basis. “Most of that stuff, frankly, has been handled out of Bonn and the Frankfurt base up until now. Mad Dog, what are you looking for?”
“Mahmoud Sharif.”
“Sharif?”
“Yeah. Palestinian. Bomb tech. Internationally known criminal. He wouldn't happen to be a volunteer, would he?”
“A controlled asset? Sharif? Are you crazy?”
“Just curious.”
He shook his head.
“Not that it wouldn't be the coup of coups to recruit him, don't get me wrong. But Sharif'd probably slit his own throat before he'd betray Allah.”
“A true believer, huh?”
“Well, there are true believers and then there are fanatics. Mahmoud's not dumb enough to blow himself up for the glory of the jihad, Mad Dog. He just makes the bombs and lets the fanatics smuggle 'em on the planes.”
“How unsporting. By karmic law, every bomb maker should be required to self-destruct with one of his own devices.”
“Sharif's been on pretty good behavior lately. Works his carpentry business during the day, runs a sculpture gallery over in the Tacheles by night.”
“The what?”
“Tacheles.” Wally said it with relish. “Isn't that a great word? Yiddish, for 'let's get down to business.”
“Mahmoud Sharif works in a place with a Yiddish name? Jesus.”
“It's the abandoned building on Oranienburger Strasse. You've seen it size of a shopping mall, derelict ever since the war. Cafes, experimental art, nightclubs tres nouveau, tres hip, even for hip Berlin. The concerts in summertime practically blow this whole quarter away.”
“And he owns a sculpture gallery. That's got to be a front. I bet he's running arms or drugs out of there.”
“He's a reformed individual, our Mahmoud. He's got kids to consider.” Wally's voice was heavy with sarcasm. “But why the interest in Sharif, Carrie? He can't be involved with the Payne kidnapping. No Palestinian would do a job for Mian Krucevic.”
“His name turned up in DESIST.” Wally set down his beer bottle.
“Turned up how?”
“I don't know. Cuddy Wilmot said his Berlin phone number tracked with 30 April.”
Wally whistled.
“Hizballah and the neo-Nazis. I don't believe it, Caroline. Sharif did not take out the Brandenburg.”