The Cutout (26 page)

“All politics is local, Caroline. It’s just the money that’s international.”

“You actually suspect that the Social Conservatives are funding hate crimes in neighboring countries? But Wally, the potential for blowback is immense!”

“The Social Conservatives are funding local chapters of their own German party in small towns throughout the region,” Wally said tensely. “The SC is in Poland, it’s in Slovakia, it’s even showing up in poorer sections of the Czech Republic and Hungary. It’s a party that feeds on economic disaffection, Caroline, and there’s plenty of disaffection in Central Europe. Communism destroyed their industry; now democracy is destroying their markets. Nothing’s easier for these poor bastards than to pick a leader who will blame the outcast of the moment—and voilà, everyone has a target for their anger.” He glanced at her. “And there’s a lot of anger, Carrie. I’m telling you, it scares the hell out of me.”

“So in Krakow, the outcasts were eating at Café Avram?”

“Sure. It takes one to know one. Jews have been the
gastarbeiters
of Poland for four hundred years.”

Caroline set down her wine. The alcohol was blurring her senses. “Nobody likes Voekl, nobody trusts him … and yet here he is. Running the damn country. How did that happen, Wally?”

“There was a convenient death.”

Gerhard Schroeder. And 30 April had murdered him. “Voekl was there to take advantage of it,” she said. “He’d amassed a considerable amount of power first.”

“Which means that your premise is wrong, Caroline.
Somebody
likes Voekl very much indeed. And they voted en masse.”

“More economic disaffection?”

“Maybe. Among the Ossies. Voekl comes from the east, you know. His claim to fame was running the best explosives plant in the GDR. He was an old Party hack before he was the face of the New European Union. But it’s more than that. He’s charming. He’s plausible. He’s telegenic in a media age.”

“If you like your men in jackboots.”

Wally laughed. “Come on, Carrie! The man’s a wet dream of Aryan motherhood! Silver hair, blue eyes. The Italian suits, the flashing white teeth. You’ve got to look beyond the furious rhetoric. Germans like their rhetoric delivered in a fist-pounding fashion.”

“He’s been married three times.”

“So he gets out the women’s vote. And that kid of his—Kiki—is like a poster child for family values. She’s cute, she’s sweet, she’s as blond as they come. Go into any hausfrau’s kitchen, from Kiel to Schleswig-Holstein, and Fritz Voekl’s picture is hanging somewhere near the stove. Half of Germany is in love with him.”

“Half of Germany was in love with Hitler.”

“Then we’ve got to place our hope—and our covert funding—with the other half,” Wally said bluntly. “A remarkable Resistance sprang up here during the Nazi years. It got zero help from outside, and it was brutally suppressed. But there was no CIA then.”

The CIA: Last, Best Hope for the Free World.
Right.
There were still some people in Operations who believed it. Caroline considered Wally and all those nights of sympathy wasted in a thousand badly lit bars, his hometown-boy routine threadbare and compromised, and felt a surge of affectionate pity. Thank God there were still people like Wally around to do the Agency’s shit work—people with integrity. Otherwise, how would the world know what to betray?

Wally knew. He had figured out right and wrong years ago and chosen his side. Caroline only hoped he’d chosen well.

“The world has changed,” she told him. “Voekl could never be as obvious as Hitler. Europe won’t let him.”

“Voekl’s not interested in Europe.” Wally flicked away her objections as though they were gnats. “He’s interested in power at home. And to shore it up, he needs a new enemy.”

“The Turks?”

“The entire Islamic world, Mad Dog. According to Voekl, Islam has torn apart the Balkans, the Central Asian republics, North Africa, the Middle East. And who’s to argue? It’s pretty tough to find an Arab apologist these days.”

“Some campaign platform,” she muttered.

“Listen.” Wally raised a forefinger and shook it under her nose. “People said that about the National Socialists
in 1930. By 1933, the Nazis had their hands around Germany’s neck. Never underestimate the lure of the Big Lie.”

The Big Lie.

Like the one she was living herself.

ELEVEN
Bratislava, 6:37
P.M.

O
TTO WAS SNORING
on Olga Teciak’s couch.

Vaclav was scrounging for food in the kitchen. Tonio was bent over a laptop computer, absorbed in the numbers he was crunching; Michael stood guard before the bathroom door. Mlan Krucevic pulled the carved antique chair close to the television screen and watched the evening news. A restless anger fretted at his entrails. The lead story was Vice President Payne’s disappearance. The White House refused to release any information about her captors or their demands, citing the sensitivity of the issue, but media speculation was rife. Most of the world’s terrorism experts had deconstructed the Brandenburg hit and concluded it was entirely engineered to mask the political abduction. The FBI was analyzing footage of the helicopter’s occupants to determine their identity, but the German police maintained that the terrorists were Turkish. An intensive interrogation of Berlin’s resident alien population was under way. A curfew had been imposed on Turkish neighborhoods. The image shifted to the Brandenburg Gate, where
police guards in black and red and gold surrounded the bomb crater. Tourists crowded to the international lens, and the Volksturm looked hostile.

“Michael,” Krucevic said over his shoulder. “Bring Jozsef. He should see this. Hurry, before the footage ends.”

It was important that the boy understand the effects of violence—the political as well as the actual. What Krucevic had caused to be done in Berlin was a direct challenge to every Berliner’s comfort. Krucevic had brought fear into all their lives; he had returned them to the state of nature, when every day survived must be considered a form of victory. Jozsef should be made to understand what power truly was.

“Look at that,” he said, sensing the boy behind him.

No response.

He looked around and saw his son’s white face, Michael’s hand on his shoulder. Both were staring at a blond woman whose camera was pointed at a Volksturm guard; the guard was screaming at her in German. In another instant the uniformed man might snatch the camera away.

“Americans,” Krucevic said bitterly. “They behave like children wherever they go.” He moved to turn off the set, but Michael said, “Wait.”

It sounded oddly like an order. There was a set expression on his ashen face, an expression Krucevic had seen only once before, when Michael was on the verge of killing a man. Looking at him, Krucevic forgot to be insulted and said quickly, “What?”

“Bombs in Prague. There were bombs in Prague after we left.” The fixed look wavered and vanished. “The Czechs called for German assistance. Could be why the border was tight.”

Krucevic considered this. It would be beyond Fritz Voekl’s control, of course, what the Czechs actually did. But a miscalculation nonetheless.

“Would you like to fly tonight, Jozsef?” he asked the boy playfully. “A small plane, something Vaclav can manage? If you’re very good, I’ll let you take the controls.”

His son gave him a look so dark and glassy with fever that he was appalled. Krucevic rose to his feet, hand outstretched, but the boy’s eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the floor.

“Get him to the woman’s bed,” Krucevic snapped at Michael. “He’s sick. Can’t you see that he’s sick?”

Without a word, Michael scooped up the child and carried him away.

Fear jangled in Krucevic’s brain. He bit back a curse and went in search of his antibiotics.

The little girl named Annicka was huddled in a corner of the bedroom with a blanket, murmuring to a doll. Olga hovered in the doorway, one hand clutching the neck of her robe tightly, as though the men might rape her. It was ludicrous, Krucevic thought as he bent over his unconscious son. Whatever beauty the woman had once possessed, whatever had attracted Vaclav Slivik, was long since gone. She was too thin, too tired. Too beaten in spirit to be anything but abysmally depressing. He slid the needle into Jozsef’s vein and sent a small prayer with it.

Olga came to stand silently beside him.

“What do you want?”

She swallowed nervously. Jozsef moaned and his head turned once on the pillow. He was still unconscious. If the anthrax had resurged … if the antibiotic wasn’t
working … But it must be working. He, Krucevic, had designed it himself.

“Well?” he asked Olga.

“I want to send my daughter to my sister’s.”

“No.”

“But Annicka goes there whenever I work!”

“You’re not working tonight.”

Her head drooped like a condemned woman’s.

“Mlan,” said Vaclav from somewhere behind her. “There will be talk. Olga has a concert tonight. If she does not appear, the phone will start ringing. There will be knocks on the door, explanations—”

“Yes, yes,” Krucevic snapped. “When is the performance?”

Hope flared in her eyes. “Eight o’clock. I usually leave at six-thirty.”

He rose from the bedside and studied her face. Olga’s fingers clutched at the robe convulsively. He reached out, irritated by the terror, and took her icy hand in his.

“Then go,” he said. “Do everything you normally would. Except for the child. She stays here until you return. Understand?”

“But my sister—”

“Tell her Annicka is sick. Tell her you have asked a neighbor to sit with her. Tell her anything but the truth.” His grip tightened on Olga’s wrist. “If you tell the truth— to your sister or anyone—your little girl dies.”

Olga’s eyes dilated, then shifted imploringly to Vaclav’s face. Krucevic released her hand.

“Get dressed,” he said.

Sophie lay alone on the tile floor of the bathroom and stared at the ceiling. The patch of damp she had seen upon
first waking had darkened with the failing light. It seemed to have grown, too—it was growing still, as she watched, like a visible manifestation of some inward cancer, the edges creeping remorselessly into the dull gray plaster.

A wave of heat rolled over her. Was her mind betraying her? Was she getting delirious? The point was to focus on something other than herself, something beyond her fever, beyond the room. She searched her brain for a safe fingerhold, a pit in the rock she might cling to.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

Then something, something—twilight and black night …

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie As the death-bed whereon it must expire Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

She shuddered, coughed. And tasted blood.

The door opened.

“Mrs. Payne.” Krucevic’s face bobbed and swam in the dim light; the door frame he leaned against wavered like a snake.

“Where is Jozsef?” she asked.

“Jozsef is ill.” Did she imagine it, or was his voice less in command? He held aloft a hypodermic needle. “And so, I imagine, are you.”

“Don’t touch me!”

“I have no choice.” There it was, the strain behind
the words, faint as a ghost. The man was afraid. “This is medicine, Mrs. Payne. You require it.”

She began to struggle, but a great weight had pinned her legs, her arms were like lead, her sight was reeling.
Krucevic is afraid.
He grasped her wrist and thrust the sweatshirt sleeve upward.

He is afraid.

The pinprick of a needle in her vein.

He had not expected this, then. The fallibility of modern science. The spiking of his own power. Not just Sophie Payne was at risk now—not just the hated hostage—but his own son.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong To love that well which thou must leave ere long.