The Cutout (14 page)

“I suppose so. I haven’t used her since Nicosia.”

“Will you be carrying a personal weapon?”

“Yes.”

The DCI snapped the folder closed.

“Dare, how much time do I have?”

“The plane leaves Dulles at midnight.”

“Why Berlin? Why not Prague, since that’s where the video surfaced?”

“By the time you fly into Central Europe, they’ll have left Prague behind. We can’t chase a moving target. But if you’re on the ground in the midst of the investigation, Carrie, you may figure out where they’re headed.”

“I want to go to Budapest.”

Dare went very still. “Because it was Eric’s last posting?”

“Partly.” Caroline hesitated, then shrugged.
“Anything
can be hidden in Budapest.”

It was not, Dare thought, the real reason. But sometimes we conceal the real reasons even from ourselves. She decided to let it go. “We both know there are two investigations under way, Carrie, and two types of manhunt. If you can make a case for tracking 30 April in Budapest or Vienna or Krakow, then make it. But start with Berlin. It’s what we’re expected to do.”

“Yes.” The professionalism had descended again; nothing of Caroline’s emotion was visible in her face. “I’d like to see that tape.”

“Not possible. It’s a very close hold.”

“What do you really expect me to do in Berlin?”

“Whatever the situation requires, my dear. I don’t expect you to single-handedly assault the strongholds of 30 April, but short of that …”

“I’m not a fool, Dare. I know very well I’m being sent out as bait.”

“You’re being sent at the President’s request,” Dare said quietly, “and believe me, he has no thought of baiting anyone. He merely admired your competent analysis.”

“Which you very thoughtfully provided. You manipulated him into asking for me. Don’t deny it. I’ve worked with you long enough to respect the subtlety of your mind. You think I’ll draw Eric out of hiding. And then betray him for the good of Agency and country. But I can promise you, Dare, that wherever Eric is—and it’s not going to be Berlin—he doesn’t care a rat’s ass about me. I’ve known that since this morning.”

“We know nothing whatsoever of Eric’s mind.” Dare’s voice hardened. “Much less his heart.” She did
not bother to argue with Caroline about her motives or methods; they had both been schooled in the ways of Intelligence. To attempt to deceive each other was childish.

“Even if he did give a shit about me, Dare, he’d never place me in danger by contacting me now. He’ll head in the opposite direction.”

“That may be true, but we have to try.” She stood up abruptly, signaling that the interview was at an end. “You’ll report back through station channels wherever you are. Use my private slug for routing, and throw in a special channel classification. What would be appropriate? Nothing that might be confused with the Task Force.”

“Who will have access?”

“No one but me.”

Caroline took a scrap of paper from Dare’s desk and scrawled a word on it swiftly.

“Cutout,”
Dare said. “How appropriate.”

It was the Intelligence term for a go-between. Or a pawn. Somebody used by both sides, for reasons she was never intended to know. Dare folded the slip of paper in precise fourths, then tossed it in her burn bag. It would be incinerated that evening, along with every other compromising detail of that turbulent day.

“You can still walk away, Carrie. You could refuse to go.”

“Not if I want a future.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. “I have no option but to attempt to find Eric and, through him, Mrs. Payne. But don’t expect much, Dare. Eric was trained by the best.”

“And Eric trained you.” Dare reached for Caroline’s hand; it was shockingly cold.

The younger woman smiled faintly. “I’m not angry,
Dare. I’m not confused. I know what I have to do. But I go with few illusions.”

“Then may I say—go with God, Caroline.” “God blew up at thirty thousand feet, Dare, somewhere over the Aegean.”

THIRTEEN
Dulles International Airport, 10:15
P.M.

C
AROLINE HAD FOUND IT DIFFICULT
to fly lately.

The chartered Boeing 777 was scheduled to depart for Frankfurt at midnight. The plane normally held around two hundred and fifty people. Tonight it would carry thirty-eight, most of them employed by the FBI— forensic technicians, bomb experts, people who understood the stress patterns of explosives on metal and concrete. In counterterrorism work, it was common to find Intelligence operatives alongside Special Agents, the one adept at working the networks, the other at clamping on cuffs. Caroline was comfortable with the Bureau people she knew and with joint CIA-FBI operations. But she had never actually flown to the site of a bombing before. The men and women sharing her airspace tonight were experts of a sort unfamiliar to her.

On the ground in Berlin, they would search for the axle of an obliterated car and hope that it bore a serial number; they would probe the crater at the Brandenburg’s foot, shifting stones made ancient by blood and grief. They would sample the soil for chemical residues
and put a name to the force that had shattered the Hotel Adlon’s fine plate-glass windows. And in a barren hall set aside for the purpose—a school cafeteria or a deserted beer garden—they would pick at the sleeves of the victims’ coats with exacting and callous tweezers.

In about eight hours’ time they would swing into action, Caroline thought, without pausing for sleep or acknowledging jet lag. They would jostle for position with the local police, yell louder in English when they misplaced their translators, and somehow, in the middle of the devastated square, produce a forensic miracle. Forgetting, if they had ever known, that the Brandenburg Gate had once been beautiful.

She nursed her gin and tonic in the VIP lounge, one of the offhand perks of crisis travel, her eyes fixed on a rerun of
Friends.
She had already presented her handgun—a Walther TPH—to airport security, along with the multiple forms required for international clearance. Her photograph, along with her seat assignment, was now posted in the cockpit of the plane, and every member of the flight crew was aware that Caroline Carmichael carried a gun. She imagined she was not alone in this; among the various Bureau personnel represented on the Berlin flight, a handful must be armed. But it was unusual for an Agency analyst. Most employees of the CIA never carried a gun. Dare had generously offered a duplicate set of weapons clearance forms made out in the name of Jane Hathaway—her backstopped alias—but Caroline had refused. Jane was supposed to be a banker living in London. She would never pack a Walther in her Kate Spade purse.

She took another sip of gin. The butterflies were starting to hum and sing in the pit of her stomach. Takeoff was the worst. Takeoff was a shove from a forty-foot platform, the harness in free fall around your waist;
takeoff was acceleration without a brake mechanism at hand.

A metaphor for the process of explosion.

She should have told the psychiatrist about her fear of flying. He might have found her ramblings illustrative. But she had been in no mood to illustrate much for Dr. Agnelli this afternoon.

“Let’s talk about the period before the crash, Mrs. Carmichael. How much did you know about your husband’s past?”

“His past? You mean, like … his childhood?”

“If you will. Parents, friends, early influences. That sort of thing.”

“The man’s dead, Doctor. The question of influence is rather moot, wouldn’t you agree?”

Had Dare ordered this session in a comfortable chair, the lighting as dim as a bordello’s? She must have. An assessment of Caroline’s sanity, once her ignorance had been proved by the box with wires. And how much, exactly, did Agnelli know about Eric? The psychiatrist seemed like a gentle man, persuasive, his face scarred indelibly by acne. He held a pen suspended between the tips of his index fingers and stared at her in a fashion that was not unkind. She mistrusted him implicitly.

“My husband rarely talked about his childhood, Doctor. It was not a happy time.”

“Really. Did he ever say
why?”

A buff-colored file lay closed on his right knee. Hers? Or Eric’s? In either case, Agnelli possessed more information than he intended to admit. She had worked with psychiatrists before. She recognized the method. He would not influence her testimony; he would prefer that she indict Eric herself. But to what end? How much had he been told?

She shifted in the chair, tweed upholstery sticking testily to her stockings. “I’m sure you’ve seen his personnel file.”

“Mmmm.” Noncommittal.

“He was a foster child,” she elaborated. “You must know that.”

“I see. And his foster parents were … less than ideal?”

“Much less.” She attempted neutrality, as though she were conducting a high-level briefing. Nothing in her voice of the violence that had shaped him.

“The father was eventually imprisoned on a charge of manslaughter, I understand.”

“Yes.”

Agnelli waited, eyes steady. Caroline stared back. If he knew about the prison time, he knew what it was for.

“And did that … episode … affect your husband, Mrs. Carmichael?”

“It must have. In some way.” She folded her arms over her chest. “What exactly are you looking for, Doctor? My husband’s been gone for years.”

Gone.
The word she would use henceforth, conveniently inexact.

On the television screen, Monica and her brother were arguing about breast size. Commercials interceded. Caroline finished her gin and tonic. And then, suddenly, Jack Bigelow’s face filled the screen.

“We have confirmed beyond a doubt that terrorists abducted Vice President Sophie Payne from the site of the Berlin bombing this morning.” Bigelow’s suit jacket was on, the bags under his eyes accentuated by the press room’s glare of lights. He looked cold and rather deadly, Caroline thought. As though the scripted lines were
processed by one part of his brain, while the other—the more calculating—had Sophie Payne’s captors pinned against the wall. She wondered if, somewhere, Eric was watching.

“Everything that can be done to locate the Vice President will be done,” Bigelow continued, “and her kidnappers will be punished to the full extent of the law. But the United States will never be held hostage to the goals or threats of a band of thugs, regardless of the cost. Mrs. Payne knows that. When she consented to serve this country, she accepted that burden of sacrifice. Our hearts and thoughts are with you, Sophie.”

In the split second of silence that fell between the President’s final word and the storm of questions hurled at him from the assembled reporters, Caroline distinctly saw his fingers tremble. It was a slight movement that came as he gripped the sides of his podium and focused on the TelePrompTer, but it was betrayal of something, all the same. Fear? The rush of crisis? Or simple exhaustion?

Agnelli would have loved it.

“Gone, but hardly forgotten,” the psychiatrist had said this afternoon. “It must have been extremely difficult for you to come to terms with your husband’s … loss.”

“I’m not sure that I really have,” Caroline had replied, with the suggestion of frankness. “But you know the old saying, Doctor. ‘Those who live by the sword die by the sword.’ Eric understood that Intelligence work posed some risks.”

“You were married … how long?”

“Ten years.” Here she was on safer ground. “Is that what this is all about? My grief? How well I’ll handle another terrorist bombing?”

Agnelli thumbed the manila file balanced on his knee. “It says here that Eric knew the man his father killed. Clarence Jackson.”

Back to that. The interest in her a blind. “He was a history teacher at Eric’s high school.”

“A teacher. I see.” The pen was slipped into a breast pocket, the fingertips steepled. Agnelli was warming to his subject. “Would you describe Mr. Jackson as a mentor?”

Caroline shrugged. “I don’t know whether Eric would have used that word or not. He liked the guy.”

“And yet his father murdered him.”

“Foster
father, Doctor. Eric never knew his own.”

The psychiatrist twitched impatiently, as though her objection were trivial. “Clarence Jackson was of African-American extraction?”

Caroline gazed at him wearily. “You’re the one with the file.”

“Killed in what amounted to a mob lynching?”

“It was 1972 in South Boston, Doctor. The level of violence was rather high.”

“Mmmm.” He glanced down at his neat pages, no longer feigning indifference. Who had put him on to this? “I see that your husband was also sentenced in juvenile court, Mrs. Carmichael, and spent several months in a detention center.”

“For vandalism. Not murder.”

“That sort of thing is probably a prerequisite for the Green Berets.” He smiled thinly.

“Not to mention the DO,” she shot back. “I hear they’re recruiting in the JDC’s these days.”

Agnelli hadn’t enjoyed her little joke.

She supposed there was a picture, for anyone who cared to paint it, of Eric as a trained survivor—a man
who from birth had learned to trust no one. Eric was too intelligent, of course, for the casual brutality of his foster home; he was charming, he drew people to him even as a boy—people like Clarence Jackson, who saw something in the scrappy white kid with the obnoxious parents and had been beaten to death for his trouble. Eric could win hearts, he could manipulate and exploit. It was a different kind of violence.

It was possible to see that particular Eric, the one who lived only in his statistics and files, hovering over Pariser Platz in a stolen helicopter.
That
Eric had absorbed the viciousness of his childhood.
That
Eric was fascinated by the people he had been trained to destroy. It was something no analyst worth her paycheck would fail to consider; Dare Atwood certainly had. Caroline had no choice but to consider it herself. The Eric she had loved must be a mirage. Why shouldn’t Agnelli’s be real?

She asked for another lime and received a second tiny bottle of gin to go with it. The butterflies in her stomach were settling down to sleep, the tension that had knit her joints relaxing inexorably. Takeoff, at this rate, might be nothing more than falling off a log.