The Cutout (25 page)

“I sure as hell would.”

“Wonder if the guy’s still on the payroll.”

“So he wasn’t blown when Eric died?”

“TOXIN? No way.” Wally glanced at her. “Is that what you’ve been thinking? That Eric’s last recruit betrayed him? And that’s why Krucevic blew up his plane? Disaster’s not that personal, Carrie, even in this business.”

Time to change the subject.

“Speaking of personal,” she said, “how’s Brenda?”

Brenda was Wally’s wife. She was a California native, a vegetarian, and a massage therapist. He had met her during language training in Monterey. She was the last person anybody expected to fall in love with Wally, but the hometown-buddy routine had apparently worked.

“Brenda left Berlin about a month ago, right after Voekl came to power. Her grandparents were Holocaust survivors, Caroline. She’s not sticking around to see whether Fritz is sane.”

“He’s never been overtly anti-Semitic, Wally.”

“No German politician can be and survive. Voekl says the right things. But the language is a sort of code, Caroline. Attack the outsider—even if it’s the Muslims this time—and sooner or later, you’ll catch up with the Jews.”

Caroline winced. “Did she take your kids?”

He nodded, gaze fixed on the wet asphalt rippling in the headlights. “The apartment’s like a mausoleum.”

Brenda was important to Wally but his two boys were his reasons to live. “That must be tough,” Caroline said.

He shrugged. “We call each other a lot. And my tour’s up in eighteen months. Look, I’m starving. Why don’t we grab something and head back to my place?”

“Something” turned out to be wurst from a kosher deli in the Scheunenviertel, the old Jewish quarter of Berlin where Wally had an apartment in a converted nineteenth-century town house. They ate brown bread, dense and nutty, and soft German cheese with the wurst. Wally drank dark beer. They sat on a faded velvet sofa in his high-ceilinged living room and talked of inconsequential things—people they knew and hadn’t seen in months, recipes for a true Hungarian
gulyás
, Brenda’s practice in the Maryland suburbs. And when the insistent edge of Caroline’s hunger had been muted, she wiped her fingers on a paper napkin and sat back to enjoy Wally’s wine.

“So do you sweep this place?” she asked, casting her eyes up to the ceiling.

“Every day, with the best possible broom,” he replied. “It’s clean. As far as I can tell.”

“No coincidences?”

“None that are more than coincidences. You can talk, Mad Dog.”

“Where do I start, Wally?”

He held her gaze impassively. “First, tell me why you’re here.”

Her pulse throbbed.
Don’t look like you’ve got something to hide
, she thought.
Wally always knows. Wally was born a spy.
She forced a rueful smile.

“I’m here because Jack Bigelow is desperate and I happened to write a bio he actually read. The President seems to think a mere analyst can pull Sophie Payne out of a hat. I can’t begin to tell you what I’m expected to do. I don’t know myself.”

“Then I propose you sit back and watch Tom Shephard.”

“The LegAtt?”

“He’s in charge on the ground. You monitor his moves and wait for information. That seems to be what analysts are most comfortable with. Watching and waiting.”

Caroline’s smile deepened. “How you cowboys despise us!”

“Not me,” Wally protested. “I’ve got nothing but respect for the Headquarters wonks. It’s just not who I am. I need … to make decisions faster. I need to
act.
Even if what I do turns out to be wrong. You analysts demand so much certainty, you know? Before you’re willing to move off a dime.”

Certainty
, Caroline thought. It had nothing to do with the shadow world of Intelligence. Intelligence was predictive. Intelligence was fact spurred by instinct, a wing flying on a prayer. Wally was right. Analysts were too damn obsessed with their own security. Too concerned with getting it
right
to say anything at all.

But time and facts were two things she lacked in the
midst of Eric’s disaster. She’d have to clutch at the puzzle pieces before they materialized, trust her gut as well as her brain.

“Not that I mean
you
, Caroline,” Wally amended. “I remember Mad Dog. I know what you’re capable of. A threat and a grenade, right when it counts. Now
that
’s moving off a dime.”

Mad Dog.
A trickle of adrenaline, recalled from the past, floated down Caroline’s spine. Had she ever been quite so reckless, so determined, so
insane
as her nickname would suggest?

She had. She had never forgotten what drove her during the months of counterterrorism training, nor how the momentary madness had felt. That knowledge was like an uneasy knife pricking at her brain. The force she could not control. Her demon.

She shook off Wally’s words and said, “Who’ve you got working the terrorist account?”

“In the station? Fred Leicester. You know Fred?”

“The name. We’ve never crossed paths.”

“He was out trolling the streets today in the hope of turning up a lead.”

In a plumber’s van full of electronics, probably. Leicester had gone through six months of tradecraft training at the Farm with Eric, tailing unsuspecting tourists through the streets of Williamsburg, Virginia. What she knew of Fred took about twenty words to say: He was a well-meaning putz. He believed the CIA was the free world’s last, best hope. And his tradecraft was shit. Fred was persona non grata waiting to happen, the worst fate that could be visited on a case officer’s career. When you were PNG’d, the world took notice. Your diplomatic immunity was stripped and you were exposed as a spy in your host country’s
newspapers. You went home in disgrace, your cover permanently blown. And in most cases, you never worked abroad again.

“Fred is the one developing our girl in the VaccuGen office,” Wally said. “And he follows the local Palestinians. There’s always a floating crap game where the rag heads are concerned. Paul—the kid you met today—does a few jobs now and then. Dead drops, brush passes … It’ll never be Berlin in the Cold War, but it’s good experience.”

“So you’ve got some terrorist assets here.”

“Not a whole lot to speak of.” Even with Caroline, Wally operated on a need-to-know basis. “Most of that stuff, frankly, has been handled out of Bonn and the Frankfurt base up until now. Mad Dog, what are you looking for?”

“Mahmoud Sharif.”

“Sharif?”

“Yeah. Palestinian. Bomb tech. Internationally known criminal. He wouldn’t happen to be a volunteer, would he?”

“A controlled asset?
Sharif?
Are you crazy?”

“Just curious.”

He shook his head. “Not that it wouldn’t be the coup of coups to recruit him, don’t get me wrong. But Sharif’d probably slit his own throat before he’d betray Allah.”

“A true believer, huh?”

“Well, there are true believers and then there are fanatics. Mahmoud’s not dumb enough to blow himself up for the glory of the jihad, Mad Dog. He just makes the bombs and lets the fanatics smuggle 7em on the planes.”

“How unsporting. By karmic law, every bomb maker should be required to self-destruct with one of his own devices.”

“Sharif’s been on pretty good behavior lately. Works his carpentry business during the day, runs a sculpture gallery over in the Tacheles by night.”

“The what?”

“Tacheles.” Wally said it with relish. “Isn’t that a great word? Yiddish, for ‘let’s get down to business.’”

“Mahmoud Sharif works in a place with a Yiddish name? Jesus.”

“It’s the abandoned building on Oranienburger Strasse. You’ve seen it—size of a shopping mall, derelict ever since the war. Cafés, experimental art, nightclubs—
très nouveau, très
hip, even for hip Berlin. The concerts in summertime practically blow this whole quarter away.”

“And he owns a sculpture gallery. That’s got to be a front. I bet he’s running arms or drugs out of there.”

“He’s a reformed individual, our Mahmoud. He’s got kids to consider.” Wally’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “But why the interest in Sharif, Carrie? He can’t be involved with the Payne kidnapping. No Palestinian would do a job for Mlan Krucevic.”

“His name turned up in DESIST.”

Wally set down his beer bottle. “Turned up how?”

“I don’t know. Cuddy Wilmot said his Berlin phone number tracked with 30 April.”

Wally whistled. “Hizballah and the neo-Nazis. I don’t believe it, Caroline. Sharif
did not
take out the Brandenburg.”

“Some link must be there. The computer found it.”

“Then the computer’s wrong. It’s happened before.”

“But somebody with knowledge and skill made the Gate’s device, Wally. This was a surgical hit. Most of the surrounding buildings are intact. You don’t get that with a barrel of fertilizer and kerosene.”

“No. You don’t. But neither do you walk up to Mahmoud and say, ‘Hey brother, done any jobs for the infidel lately?’”

“There are subtler ways of gathering information.”

“Maybe you should run this by Shephard. He’s got good ties to the BKA—the Bundeskriminalamt, the German federal police. Maybe they could tap Sharif’s phones. They can do it legally now, did you know that?”

Caroline nodded. For five decades the German constitution had forbidden wiretaps, a reaction to the Gestapo persecution of the Nazi era. That had changed a few years ago, when German prosecutors voiced their frustration at being denied the routine evidence a hundred other countries collected on suspected criminals.

Wiretaps.

With a surge of vertigo, Caroline felt the broad plank floor of Wally’s living room careen upward. She’d just handed Wally Mahmoud Sharif-—whose phone lines might lead directly to Eric.
Stupid, stupid.

Dare would never forgive her. She pressed a hand to her forehead, willing the exhaustion of jet lag to recede. “Are you sure you want to share this stuff with the BKA?” she asked.

“You mean DESIST? We probably won’t. We can offer up Sharif for other reasons. But I’ll let Tom handle that. He’s pretty used to working liaison. Which reminds me. You’ll see Tom tomorrow at the Interior Ministry. Bombing meeting. I’ll pick you up at the Hyatt at ten-thirty.”

“You might want to check with Scottie Sorensen first,” Caroline suggested feebly. “About the wiretapping, I mean. Just to be sure. I wouldn’t want to end-run Scottie’s authority.”

“Okay.” From the sound of Wally’s voice, he was humoring her and trying not to feel annoyed. It was rare for an analyst to second-guess the station chief. “What exactly is worrying you, Mad Dog? The BKA are pretty good at intercepts, believe me. Makes you wonder how often they practiced under the old law.”

The floorboards steadied, her vertigo receded. “Who are they tapping these days?
Gastarbeiters?”

He laughed brusquely. “Don’t need wiretaps for them. Guest workers have no citizenship rights. Under the Voekl program of repatriation, you just frame ’em and deport ’em as fast as you can.”

“You really don’t like the chancellor, do you, Wally?”

“What can I say, Carrie? I don’t trust Voekl’s politics. And he’s a dangerous man.”

“Dangerous how?”

Wally took a pull on his beer. “You’re the leadership analyst.”

“I follow terrorists, not mainstream politicians.”

“Well, then maybe you should broaden your scope.”

She studied him over the rim of her wineglass. “What are you saying?”

“Sometimes the boundaries between the state and the fringe aren’t so clear. Look at Arafat. One day he’s a guerilla hero, next he’s a virtual head of state. Or Syria’s Assad. How many nutsos with a gun did that guy fund from the presidential palace, huh? I won’t even
mention
Qaddafi.”

“You think Voekl is funding terrorists?”

“Maybe not terrorists. I would never go so far as to suggest he’s behind 30 April. He’s not that stupid, Carrie. But there’s been a rash of hate crimes throughout Central Europe. We think that Uncle Fritz’s party is bankrolling some of them.”

“You
think?”

Wally tossed his bottle in the trash. “I know, I know—I need the evidence. All that certainty you analysts love. I’m working on it.”

“What kind of hate crimes? Guest workers? Petty stuff?”

“Not entirely.” Wally suddenly looked uneasy. “If it were domestic incidents alone, we’d be inclined to sit back and bide our time. Chancellors come and go. But this stuff is bleeding into other people’s backyards. Take the Café Avram, for instance.”

“Café Avram.”

“Jewish revival place in old Krakow. Ever been to Krakow?”

Caroline shook her head.

“It’s about three and a half hours due east as the crow flies. Eleven hours, if you’re lucky, by the Polish roads. I drove over right after we landed here, back in early August. I wanted to see Auschwitz, or rather Brenda did. Some of her people died there.” He leaned forward, hands clasped idly between his knees. “The camp and the rail yards are sitting right there in the middle of this gorgeous farmland, Carrie. Rolling hills, gnarled old trees, a man walking behind a horse-drawn plow, straight out of
War and Peace.
Some of the farmers were burning leaves. The essence of autumn, right? Only you draw it in with your breath and you can’t help but think,
the smell of burning. Ashes and burning.
Everybody in that countryside must have smelled the ovens, and they went right on plowing.” He paused abruptly.

Caroline prompted, “Café Avram.”

“Right. The old Jewish quarter of Krakow is beautiful. Spielberg filmed
Schindler’s List
there, you know?
Café Avram had become a sort of cultural center. Jewish music, kosher food. A tourist mecca. Anyway, three months ago, somebody torched it. The owners slept over the shop. Both were killed by the fire. And their three kids.”

“And you think Voekl’s party was behind the arson?”

“The Warsaw station is looking into it. They cabled us for information.”

Caroline frowned. “But you said that no German politician can afford to be anti-Semitic. And why would a German party be operating beyond its borders?”