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had been bouncing about their chests. Reluctantly, Martini handed Jake his guns. “But your friend here does not have a permit,” Franz said. “I could bring him in for that.”
    â€œThanks, Franz,” Jake said. “If you need anything else, you have my cell number.”
    Instead of Jake and Kurt leaving, Jake now shifted his head toward the front door. “Please make sure you call a locksmith. I’m sure Herr Albrecht will insist the city pay for those repairs.”
    Martini was about to say something but instead pulled his assistant toward the door without saying anything.
    When they were gone, Kurt let out a deep breath. “That was my favorite piece,” he said. “And you let him take it.”
    â€œSorry. What the hell kind of cover story are you using? Badger Computers?”
    â€œHeard you used the same thing in Munich years ago. Go with what works.”
    The Agency was getting smarter, Jake thought. When he was in the old CIA, the military attaches were always assigned to embassies. Yet everyone knew they were working for U.S. intelligence. Now, to give them a front company, made a hell of a lot of sense.
    â€œKeep you away from the embassy,” Jake said. “Good plan. I’m sure you have a spare gun laying around.”
    Kurt laughed. “More than one.”
    â€œGood. Let’s get the hell outta here.”
    â—
    She had first watched the polizei assault team follow the two men into the warehouse, had heard the alarm go off, and then saw Martini and Donicht come out sometime after the armed team. Something was wrong with that. Martini looked angry, his arms flinging to the air as he spoke with his assistant. Then they had all gotten into the vehicles and left, leaving only the two men behind. But that made no sense.
    Waiting for a call, her cell finally rang just as the two men came out and got into the man’s Audi a couple blocks down the street. She lay down onto the passenger seat, listening to the caller, as the Audi passed by her. She thanked the caller, made a quick U-turn, and hurried down the street after the Audi and two men.
    So that’s how this would go down. That was fine with her.

7
    Magdeburg, Germany
    Sitting in his library, books lining the walls on two sides of the room from floor to ceiling, Hermann Conrad swirled Remy Martin Cognac in a crystal glass, brought it to his nose and then took a small sip, letting the liquid remain on his lips and tongue to savor the taste. Everything Conrad had now was expensive, but that had not always been the case. In his youth in the old East Germany under the Soviet occupation, his family barely made enough to feed he and his two brothers Aldo and Gunter, living in that tiny farm house that was now surrounded by a dozen tall, white windmills. He smiled at the irony of that, knowing he now owned many of those windmills. He thought back on how he as the older brother had gone to college in Dresden because of his grades in gymnasium—paid for by the very government he had come to hate—while his brothers would not be so lucky. Sure Aldo had been able to make a living for a while working the lignite mines in Sachsen-Anhalt until he died in an accident there, leaving his wife and young child to fend for themselves. Now Hermann sent her and young Aldo money each month, and he was glad to help. Gunter had been more fortunate by most standards. He had seen the good life for a while working for a Stasi unit in Berlin up until the wall fell. He had died at the hands of an angry mob while he tried to destroy records of that secret-police agency headquarters in East Berlin—his body pummeled by chunks of the Wall that divided the city. Hermann had not even recognized his own brother lying on the morgue table.
    He ran his hand across the cherry desk, the cold smoothness tingling his fingers. Feeling the warmth on his face from the real fire burning in the fireplace to his left, Hermann