Williams came back into the conference room, which had become a command center of sorts. "We've got something," he said. "There's a unit called Angels of Death."

"The Angels of Death?"

"That's right. But the initial planning for that unit goes back to 1995. They were already planning to set up some Unknown Warfare troops then. At that time, there were warnings of attacks from the CIA office in Sudan. Richard Clarke of the Counterterrorism Division put on the pressure, saying you couldn't use normal means to deal with terrorists, but he was overheard." Williams looked at the papers while Katherine stood up from her desk in surprise.

She laid her head back on her neck and placed both backs of her hands on her forehead while she let out a shaky, shocked gasp. "Oh, my God." Not because of the news, but because she realized what she and her fiancé had been involved in even then, without even realizing it; after all, they were trying to catch a murderer who was bestially slaughtering people. And that this hunt ended in the death of her fiancé and a man who was accused of something he had not done at all and for that, apart from Nathan's murder, was innocent in prison.

Elizabeth looked at her sister with wide eyes and would have loved to go to the doctor, would have loved to take her little sister in her arms and give her at least a little comfort, but she knew that now had not been the right moment.

Williams propped himself up on the conference table and looked at the papers. "There was no 9/11 then, and there was no Iceman."

Nick watched his wife, who was trying to breathe calmly, closely and furrowed his brows. "Did the Iceman know our killer?"

Williams pressed his lips together with a drooping head and shook it. "Possibly. But our contact can't find out anything about it. At least, not without putting themselves in danger and blowing our cover."

Elizabeth frowned deeply as she watched her sister, who was visibly struggling to keep her composure, run her hand over her lips, clearing her throat. "What else is there about the Angels of Death Unit?"

Williams licked his lips and raised his brows briefly. "As I said, the unit was first used in Sudan, and in Sudanese Darfur, to be exact, it was for oil."

Elizabeth gritted her teeth and took a deep breath. "And therefore for money."

Williams took a long look at his troubled former student and sighed. "As always."

Katherine stopped, sniffled, and discreetly wiped her nose with her index finger before looking at Williams. "Does Sudan have big oil stocks?"

Williams looked at her for a long moment and took a deep breath. "CIA records say it's up to 1.6 billion barrels. In terms of world oil reserves, Sudan ranks thirty-fifth."

Nick pulled up a map on his laptop.

Elizabeth didn't see what oil in Sudan had to do with the killer. "So?"

Williams pointed to Sudan's borders, frowning deeply. "The dispute over the oil was at the same time about warfare between Muslims and Christians, south versus north. Some Muslim warlords control part of the oil refineries, and there are right-wing Christians who want to wipe out the Muslim minority in the south. Out of all this, hatred develops, the best breeding ground for terrorism. And that's what you want to fight."

"And that's why they sent elite troops there?" asked Elizabeth with furrowed brows.

Brooks had already rolled up his shirt sleeves and looked at his old buddy. "It was a matter of speed, wasn't it?"

Williams nodded slowly. "Speed and brutality, yes. It was said at the time that you needed faster troops than the UN or NATO."

"NATO," Brooks said dismissively. "No Action, Talk Only."

"That's the way it was. UN and NATO forces were and are considered mediocre and unmotivated. People who immediately scream for a ceasefire as soon as anyone of them ever dies." Williams looked at the map again. "Since 2011, Sudan and South Sudan have been two states, but they are still at war. It's been that way for decades. The first Sudanese civil war began in 1962, the second in 1983, and it wasn't until 2003 that there was a ceasefire that lasted until 2004. Some say longer than ever before. And let's ask ourselves the honest question: which UN peacekeeping mission was the most successful? Rwanda in 1994? Kosovo? Or Sudan? In most cases, peace only comes when U.S. Special Forces intervene. And intervene, not just blue helmets come and set up porta-potties. And even those special forces often enough leave only half-finished work because they're not allowed to do more." He paused. "Maybe sometimes it just helps to take out the aggressors as quickly and ruthlessly as possible."

Katherine had a look in her eyes that made her mentor clear his throat, but then she took a deep breath and asked in a neutral tone. "The theory of terror that equal or greater terror can only stop?"

Williams licked his lips again and nodded.

Now Elizabeth stood up as well and shook her head for a second. "Were those Angels of Death only in Sudan for the oil, then?"

Williams sat down now and looked at her for a long moment. "Also because of the burgeoning terrorism. Bin Laden had a nucleus there for some time, after all. At first, an army was sent there by Executive Outcomes, private security, and military companies. But it quickly became clear that tougher caliber was needed."

"So how do we know it was the Draftsman with his squad?"

Williams pointed to a picture of a dead body in the e-mail. "Those are the pictures from Darfur, and these are from Khartoum, and these are from Juba, the capital of South Sudan."

The pictures showed mutilated bodies, slashed chests, and bodies full of wounds and bullet holes. Where the heart had been, a black hole gaped. The corpses withered in the sun, and the desert floor was full of blood.

But there was more. Elizabeth squinted her eyes.

Then she saw it.

The mark.

The arrow rune.

She pointed excitedly at the screen. "That's it! The rune!"

Williams clasped his hands in front of his mouth and looked at her with a frown. "It was first thought to have been Islamists cutting out the hearts of their victims," he said, "but this rune is unusual. And there is no real connection to Islam. So the rune had to have come from someone else."

"That's the arrow rune," Elizabeth murmured again.

Brooks nodded in agreement. "Yes. Either on the arm or the chest."

Katherine kept pressing her lips together before looking at the screen. "Just in Sudan? Or were they somewhere else?"

Williams looked at her for a long moment. "They were in Iraq, too. In Fallujah and Abu Ghraib. There are pictures of that, too. Which, of course, we've never officially seen."

Elizabeth looked at said pictures and gritted her teeth with her lips pressed together. "As evidence, those pictures would be useless in our case anyway. But those were the sites of operations? Sudan and Iraq?"

Williams blinked a few times. "Sudan, Iraq, and then Somalia. The inhabitants there has little choice between catching fish and piracy, so they become modern-day pirates and terrify the entire international shipping industry. That's why you want to take them out. Then came Pakistan, added Afghanistan, and sometimes Congo. But the worst is coming now."

Katherine closed her eyes for a moment. "I can guess," she murmured.

Williams looked at her for a long moment. "You're probably thinking right because currently, we have ISIS in Tikrit in Iraq. They're not just rolling everything over and beheading anyone who thinks differently from them in front of cameras. They not only promise the assassins virgins in paradise, but they also marry terrorists to women from poor regions of Africa. Sex Jihad. Many of these terrorists come from Syria with American passports, and when they're here, it's too late. And all of us, including us in this very room," Williams put on a pitying face, "seem to be sleeping pretty soundly in the process."

Elizabeth ran her fingers over her lips with a deep frown and took a deep breath. "I'm afraid you're right about that." She glanced at the printouts. "It says here that the Angels of Death also supported the Peshmerga, the special forces of the Kurds."

Williams nodded slowly. "Seems that way. The ISIS guys send suicide bombers forward to demoralize the enemy before the real troops advance. The Angels of Death are the vanguard of the opposition, and they're cleaning up so brutally that some people already don't dare emigrate to Syria as terrorists."

Elizabeth looked at him, strained with furrowed brows. "So these elite units, these Angels of Death, are pre-emptive strikes, so to speak?"

"Yes. They don't wait until the terrorists are back in the West as returnees, and they kill these guys on the spot. Before they do that, they torture the terrorists to get as much information as possible about covert weapons caches and operational plans."

Katherine closed her eyes again for a moment. "Then couldn't it be that our killer will be called up again soon?"

An intense frown formed on Williams' forehead. "If our killer is in such a unit, it may well be. That's why we have to hurry." He pulled out another picture that looked more like an expressionist portrait than a color painting. On it were the outlines of a massive figure on a dune against the setting sun. In his hand was an enormous rifle. The figure was standing on a small mountain of unidentifiable objects. Upon closer inspection, Elizabeth realized the objects were corpses and body parts.

Williams tapped the image. "In this unit, the Angels of Death, there was a man. He was angry at the Army and his employers at the Pentagon and the CIA. That's why he was all the more brutal on the battlefields."

Elizabeth took a deep breath. "Why was he angry?" She could already guess who this colossal guy in this picture was, standing with his feet on a mountain of corpses like a triumphant war god.

"He wanted to be in on the killing of Osama Bin Laden back then." Williams frowned again. "My informant says his favorite thing to do was to cut out Bin Laden's heart himself."

Elizabeth gave him a long look. "Like with the bodies in the pictures in Sudan. That was always him? Did he cut out the hearts of the enemy in all the missions?"

Williams nodded slowly. "Yes. And his fallen enemies, he cut this rune-like mark." He looked at those present in turn. "You know what they called him in the unit because of that?"

Elizabeth looked at him tensely. "What?"

"Death Designer."

"Death Designer," Elizabeth repeated. "Draftsman."

Katherine stood up from her chair with force and marched toward the glass door of the conference room. "Excuse me, I ... I need some fresh air."

Nick was the first to get up and follow his wife but paused with a deep frown when Elizabeth rose from her chair and raised her hand reassuringly. She took a deep breath and placed that hand on his shoulder as he sat back down, saying, "I got this, Nick", she whispered.

Nick nodded slowly but stood up as well and left the conference room after his sister-in-law, giving himself a short break from it all.

xxx

Elizabeth stepped out of the BPD building and squinted into the sun before fishing her pack of cigarettes out of her jacket pocket and lighting a cigarette, drawing the smoke deep into her lungs and closing her eyes as she did so. If she was honest with herself, this break came in handy. If Katherine hadn't called her in, it would have been the detective who needed a coffee from the coffee shop around the corner on the spur of the moment.

She opened her eyes again after a few seconds and looked around until she saw her younger sister sitting elbowed on a bench not too far from the BPD's main entrance and walked up to it, sat down next to the distraught psychiatrist without saying a word.

Katherine straightened her upper body, loudly sucked the air into her lungs with closed eyes, and shook her head. Automatically she knew that there was no danger from the person next to her and that she could trust this person next to her without exception.

"Oh my God," she whispered, shaking her head, "what have we gotten ourselves into?"

Elizabeth took a drag from her cigarette and furrowed her brows while placing her elbows on her knees. "I have no idea," she whispered. She turned her head and looked closely at the younger woman. "But whatever it is, we'll get through this together, Kate. Like we always have. Come what may."