The Cutout (13 page)

The camera lens crept closer to the Vice President’s face. As the image focused, the watchers assembled in the White House VTC room saw Sophie Payne’s lips form three words.

No, Jack. No.

TWELVE
Washington, 3:30
P.M.

J
ACK BIGELOW CRUMPLED THE FRONT PAGE
of the
Washington Post
and tossed it toward a wastepaper basket. The Oval Office was considerably cooler than the VTC room, but everyone looked uncomfortable. Except the President. From his expression, Matthew Finch thought, Bigelow might be facing a round of golf rather than an international threat.

In twenty-three years, Finch had won cases with Jack, faced bankruptcy with Jack, survived a vicious campaign for the presidency with Jack. The two men had fly-fished Montana, endured Finch’s divorce, and attempted Everest together—their least successful undertaking to date. It was popular among the press to describe the President as a genial bear of a man; they played up his good ol’ boy manners the way they celebrated Julia Roberts’s teeth. But Finch’s long apprenticeship in the art of Jack gave him a privileged understanding, an ability to read volumes in the slightest sign. Most men betrayed their stress in their bodies. They fidgeted. They ran their fingers through their hair.
They might even take a swing at somebody when the situation deteriorated. Jack Bigelow, on the contrary, became more contained. He throve on adrenaline.

Everything Mlan Krucevic had spit at the video camera had whetted Bigelow’s appetite for battle. Sophie Payne was a proxy for both men; from this moment on, their argument was with each other.

“What the hell does he mean, a series of events in Central Europe?” Bigelow demanded.

“Since he went to the trouble to bomb Berlin and kidnap the Vice President of the United States,” Finch replied, “I imagine we can expect fairly serious episodes of terror. Krucevic wants to bring the U.S. to its knees. He specifically instructed us to restrain our allies. That means his moves in the next five days will be bold, destabilizing, and played for high stakes. Sophie’s too significant a chip to waste on trivialities.”

Bigelow nodded. “But where exactly will he land? And what can we do to spike the damage without sacrificing Sophie?”

“May I suggest, Mr. President, that I task the Agency’s key country analysts to search for signs of instability in their accounts?” Since viewing the video, Dare Atwood looked older and grimmer, as though the skin of her face had turned from flesh to stamped metal. She was self-possessed as always; she sat in her chair awaiting the President’s pleasure; but Matthew Finch felt the sparks of urgency crackling off her frame. “I could establish a Central European Task Force. Staff it on a twenty-four-hour basis.”

“I s’pose it can’t hurt, Dare. And get the NSA to process traffic for those countries on the highest-priority basis.”

Al Tomlinson cleared his throat and glanced uneasily around the room. “What did he mean, calling Mrs. Payne an apostate Jew?”

No one replied.

“The Bureau did her security clearance,” Tomlinson persisted. “She was raised Lutheran, married Episcopalian.”

Bigelow shrugged. “He’s a neo-Nazi, Al. He sees what he hates everywhere he goes. And Sophie’s parents were German.”

“But they emigrated well before the war.” Tomlinson sounded aggrieved, as though his Bureau’s background checkers would be held responsible. “Mrs. Payne was born in the U.S. Jake Freeman knew Roosevelt. He wrote columns for the Washington
Star
.”

“It’s irrelevant what Sophie might be,” Finch said flatly. “The important thing is what Krucevic believes. He believes she’s Jewish. That gives a fascist like him the right to treat her like dirt. He’s telling us loud and clear that he has no reason to spare her life.”

“Think he’s in Prague?” Bigelow asked abruptly.

“For at least as long as it takes to raise the flag in the embassy garden,” Dare Atwood replied. “Give it an hour. Then they’re gone.”

“And you’re thinkin’ the flag should be raised.” He crumpled another sheet of newsprint, tossed it, missed. “Regardless of the cost. I can’t give this guy a blank check, Dare. Who knows what he might do? Blow up a plane. Or the Hungarian parliament.”

“Or sprinkle Anthrax 3A on all the salad bars in the free world,” finished Matthew Finch. “Besides which, we have a policy of non-negotiation with terrorist groups.”

“I know what our policy is, thank you very much.”

Finch grimaced; being slammed in public was one of the privileges of a First Friend. “On the other hand, it doesn’t look very presidential to sit on your hands and
leave a woman hanging out to dry. Especially one as popular as Sophie.”

“Well, don’t that just drop the turd in the punch bowl, Matt,” Bigelow snarled. “You’re supposed to
advise
, remember? Not
confuse.”

“I’d suggest you pursue two courses of action at once.” Finch jotted something on a legal pad and glanced coldly at Bigelow over his glasses. “Publicly, you state that you do not negotiate with terrorists. Privately, you buy time. At least until Sophie gets that antibiotic.”

“Time.” Bigelow glanced at his watch. “At least two hours have passed since they made the video. Jesus F. Christ.”

He didn’t have to elaborate. If Sophie Payne had actually been injected with Anthrax 3A, she would be in agony right now.

Finch passed Bigelow a sheet of paper. It was the biographic profile of Mlan Krucevic that Dare had offered him earlier. He had scrawled at the bottom,
Find out who wrote this.

Bigelow looked up. “Dare, who’s handling the 30 April account?”

“A number of people, Mr. President. But that bio was written by a leadership analyst named Caroline Carmichael. She’s working the MedAir 901 investigation in the Counterterrorism Center.”

“She seems to have a handle on this guy,” Bigelow said. “Once you’ve read this, nothing he said or did today is much of a surprise. Although I’m not sure I’d call him
sane”.

“Perhaps,” Finch suggested, “Ms. Carmichael should be sent to Berlin.”

“These jokers aren’t
in
Berlin, Matt.” The President
was impatient. “After that flag goes up, they may not even be in Prague.”

“But they staged a brilliant hit in the heart of the new capital,” Finch persisted.
“Somebody
in Berlin knows the 30 April operation. Krucevic must have a network there, something that could be identified and exploited. Where else do we start if not in that square?”

“Caroline is no case officer, Matt,” Dare protested.

He dismissed this with a wave. “You’ve got case officers on the ground. Carmichael understands the terrorists’ thinking. She knows how to deal with Krucevic. She might even be able to predict where he’ll go. Hell, if it ever comes down to negotiation, she’ll be invaluable. We need her in Berlin.”

“But she’s not accustomed—”

“Then let’s call it a go,” Bigelow interrupted. “Get the girl on the plane.”

In a previous incarnation, Dare Atwood had run the Office of Russian and European Analysis. She had trained Caroline Carmichael and followed her progress through the bureaucratic ranks as an eagle follows the flight of its young. When MedAir 901 exploded thirty-three minutes after takeoff, it was Dare who met Caroline’s plane from Frankfurt and broke the news of Eric’s death. A cord of unspoken affection ran between the two women that made the present disaster all the more painful.

But as she stared through her office windows at the dismal autumn night, Dare felt something like heartache. Her affection for Caroline was irrelevant now. She had only one course of action open to her; she would take out the cost in nightmares if necessary.

Alerted by something—a footfall, a shift in atmosphere
—she turned an instant before the tap came on her office door. Ginny, her executive secretary, peered around it. “Ms. Carmichael to see you.”

“Hello, Dare,” Caroline said as she crossed the DCI’s carpet for the second time that day. She was one of the few subordinates who still called Dare by her first name. “Am I allowed to ask how it went at the White House?”

“You are. As well as could be expected. Thirty April has made contact.”

Caroline came to a dead halt midway between Dare’s desk and her easy chairs. Her pallor was suddenly dreadful.

“You were hoping, somewhere in your mind, that it wasn’t Krucevic,” the DCI said softly. “So much for hope. Take a seat.”

The younger woman did as she was told. After an instant, she managed the look of fixed calm Dare remembered from the morning’s conference. She doubted it had been evident for most of the afternoon. Caroline had spent the past four hours off campus, in the polygraphers’ relentless hands. Four hours of questions and seismic bar graphs, of emotions wildly fluctuating. At one point, the Security report noted, the subject had looked close to tearing the wires from her fingers and walking out. But the infernal machine had eventually given her a clean bill of health.

“I’m sorry to call you back here at this time of night,” Dare told her. It was seven-thirty late by government standards.

“I’d have come anyway, if only to hold Cuddy’s hand. What sort of contact?”

“They dropped a video and the Vice President’s clothes at Embassy Prague.”

“Payne is on the video?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Caroline’s eyes narrowed. “She’s not—”

“Not dead.” Dare twisted the topaz on her finger. “By now, with any luck, she might even be resting comfortably. But if she’s left for long in 30 April’s hands, I wouldn’t vouch for her chances.”

Caroline nodded, her lips compressed. “I’d hoped her status would shield her.”

“Status didn’t do much for Gerhard Schroeder.” Dare, too, had seen photographs of the Socialist chancellor’s blasted limo. The mortar that had killed Schroeder was triggered when the car crossed an infrared beam. No smoking gun, no fingerprints, only a crater where a man had once been.

“What I heard today convinced me that Mrs. Payne is in extreme peril,” Dare said. “Which makes me question whether 30 April has any intention of returning her at all.”

The implication hung in the air between them.

Caroline took a deep breath, a swimmer about to plunge. “Did you see … Eric?”

“No. It was impossible to see anyone. Krucevic was never visible on camera—-just a voice. The rest of them, maybe three or four men, wore hoods. Krucevic referred to a few by name. Otto, I think—”

“Weber,” Caroline said automatically. “Did he call anyone Michael? Cuddy thinks it’s possible Eric is still using his Agency alias. He found something in DESIST.”

Dare shook her head. “But there was a boy. Jozsef Krucevic claimed he was his son.”

She watched Caroline consider this fact like a cut stone under a spotlight.

“And he offered the kid up to the world of television? I wonder why. He kidnapped Jozsef, you know, from his mother. If we could find her—” She stood and began to turn restlessly before the DCI’s desk.

“We could use her,” Dare concluded quietly. “You think like a case officer.”

Caroline laughed. “I wish. That’s what we need— a cowboy with a cause. Only whom do we trust?”

“I’ve always preferred straight thinkers to straight shooters. So think out loud. Krucevic and company were in Prague a few hours ago. Where are they headed?”

“Prague is probably a diversion,” Caroline replied, “but they’ll want to stay fairly close to an urban center, in order to use our embassies for contact. Bratislava is an easy jump from Prague. So is Budapest or Vienna. Poland is the wrong direction. If they’d wanted Poland, they’d have started there from Berlin.”

“
If
they’re operating in a linear fashion,” Dare countered. “Don’t rule out Poland. These people are byzantine.”

“Serbs are Byzantine,” Caroline corrected her. “Krucevic is a Croat. He would
not
consider that a compliment.”

“Caroline, I’m sending you to Berlin on the Bureau’s plane.”

The younger woman stopped pacing.

Dare said, “You’re traveling at the request of the President.”

“I am? Gee. Maybe he’ll give me one of those nifty little stickpins with the presidential seal on it.”

“Support the Bureau investigation, Carrie, in any
way you can. It’ll be headed up by the Berlin Legal Attaché, but our station chief—a fellow named Walter Aronson—should be grateful to have you.”

“I know Wally.”

Of course Caroline knew Wally. He had replaced her husband in Budapest two and a half years ago. “You’re going under State cover,” Dare continued. “Ambassador Dalton has been informed you’re coming. Embassy communications are down, and the staff is mainly operating out of Dalton’s residence. You’ll make the best of it, I know.”

“I always do,” Caroline said.

“Travel Section has your itinerary and funds. You can pick them up on your way out of the building. Your dip passport is in order, I hope?”

“Last time I looked.”

Dare glanced in a file. “And you have a backstopped identity. A Jane Hathaway resident in London. Still clean?”