My instinct was to jump on the next plane to New York and strangle Harris with my bare hands. It was easiest to hate him, even though I had enough reasons to know that Juliet and my father had been involved as well. My sister had been there in person, after all, and my father had lied to me about my calling him for help. After being trapped for so many years with the belief that I was a murderer, I felt as if I’d been released from prison. Mehmet Badem didn’t know who had killed Mirelle, but I did: Harris. The only question was who had come up with the plan. I couldn’t head back to New York with only the word of an ailing drug addict to support my accusations. I needed more.

I hadn’t laid eyes on Klaus von Strohm in four years, and while I didn’t know where to find him, I knew how to reach him. I dialed a pager number and waited for the call back. One of Klaus’s henchmen phoned me within the quarter hour. “This is Theo Thraxton,” I told him. “I’m in Berlin, and I need to see Klaus as quickly as possible.”

Half an hour later, I received another call. “Klaus will meet you at your hotel at seven thirty. Be dressed for dinner.”

As I hung up, I realized that I hadn’t told Klaus where I was staying. Not that it mattered. Berlin was his town, and he owned it.

A black Mercedes was waiting outside my hotel at the appointed time. The driver opened the door, and I slid inside. The car was empty.

“I take it Klaus is meeting me at the restaurant?” I asked the driver in English as he settled into his seat. He was nineteen or twenty, olive skinned and dark haired.

“Yes, sir,” he answered.

The drive into the heart of Mitte took fifteen minutes and brought me back to the Brandenburg Gate—now lit for evening and looking exactly as I remembered it—and to the grand boulevard of Unter den Linden. The driver turned right on Friedrichstrasse and right again on Behrenstrasse before stopping suddenly in front of an alleyway. “Here you are, sir.”

“Where’s the restaurant?”

“Here you are, sir,” the boy repeated. He wasn’t going to be of any help. I got out of the car.