“Not at all. Just wondering where you stand on Everett Westcott.”
Everett Westcott.The name alone made her temples throb harder. Ranger reached for the Advil bottle again, thought better of it, and placed it on the desk instead.
“We’ve started looking,” she said. “Quietly. But like I told Caspian, Westcott isn’t just connected to the highest levels of power, the man’s revered in many circles.”
Drescher nodded. “We feel the same way.”
“We? As in the BND?” she asked.
The German spy gave a noncommittal shrug. “And the entire German government.”
She looked at the bottle of Advil. Her doctor had warned her to cut back. Apparently sixteen pills a day wasn’t sustainable. She sighed and reached into the mini fridge behind her desk. She grabbed two bottles of water and tossed one to Drescher.
“Hearts United has your government’s support?” she asked.
“Full support,” Drescher confirmed. “And to be honest, I understand why.”
Ranger popped four more pills and took a swig from her bottle. Her doctor would throw a fit, but her doctor wasn’t trying to hold the world together with chewing gum and half-truths, was she?
“What about Sofie?” she asked.
A shadow flickered behind the German spy’s eyes. “Not much more than what you already know,” he said.
“You believed she was dead?”
“We all did. Until we didn’t.”
“Meaning?”
Drescher leaned forward. “She’s the reason we recalled Liesel to Berlin a few months back. Facial recognition flagged Sofie in an African airport.”
“An African airport? Can you be more specific?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Ranger understood. The BND was clearly breaking a few laws in accessing a foreign nation’s security system.
“What’s the BND doing scanning for long-dead logistics officers in African airports?” Ranger asked.
“That’s just it, my friend. We’re not.”
She set her water down. “Then who submitted her into the system?”
“Not sure, but if you’re asking me to guess, I’d say it’s probably the same people who green-lit the arrest warrant for Caspian and Liesel in Turkey.”
Her pulse ticked upward.
“We’re trying to trace it,” she said. “But Ankara isn’t exactly cooperating. I don’t need to tell you how strained our relations are with them at the moment.”
Drescher didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. Every intelligence officer worth their salt knew that the United States’ relationship with Turkey had shifted from alliance to uneasy coexistence. The Cold War had bonded them, and NATO had reinforced the link, but now? Turkey was hedging its bets. Buying the S-400 missile systems from Moscow hadn’t just sent shock waves through the Pentagon, it had triggered sanctions. Ankara claimed it allowed them a certain strategic autonomy, but Washington had called it a betrayal. Add in the disputes over Syria and the American support for some Kurdish groups, and the whole relationship had turned into a transactional mess.
“It’s a different world, I guess,” she offered.
“Different times, different rules,” Drescher said.
“Okay. Let’s assume you’re right and that the same person flagged Sofie and framed Caspian and Liesel. That means we’re asking the same two questions.”
“Who. And why,” Drescher said.
