The Cutout (37 page)

When Caroline dialed his secure line, Cuddy let it ring five times before he picked up. He was probably absorbed in reading Intelligence traffic, she thought, his mind deep in the clandestine maze.

“Your money or your wife.”

“Mad Dog! What’s happening?”

“Nothing good. I blew it, Cud. Berlin station is bugging Mahmoud Sharif.”

“Carrie, I
told
you to drop it. Do you realize what happens if Wally picks up Eric’s voice?”

“I know. I’m sorry. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe they’ve had a falling-out.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

“I thought Dare should have a heads-up.” Caroline forced herself to sound calm. “So she can contain the problem if it goes public.”

“Right,” he said with a brittle laugh. “And I get to tell her.”

Caroline was silent.

“Anything else?” he demanded harshly.

“Voekl’s closed the crater.”

“I know. It was on CNN.”

“We think he’s running scared. That he’s deep-sixing evidence because it incriminates him.”

“Maybe we should start a rumor in the
Washington Post.
‘Intelligence sources suggest …’”

“That should keep Dare occupied. Cuddy—”

“Yeah?”

“What do you know about Hungary?”

“They’re dead broke. And there’ll be hell to pay.”

“So the news is out.”

“I got it in a cable from Buda thirty minutes ago.”

“Think it’s possible Lajta was murdered?”

He considered this an instant. “One of a series of events in Central Europe?”

She smiled involuntarily at the phone. In Cuddy’s world, the reconquest of the Third Reich was completely plausible. He knew, unlike Shephard, that she wasn’t crazy.

“I’ll start watching the corporate accounts,” he told her.

Which meant the VaccuGen accounts. Cuddy had been tracing them for months now, through all the blinds and front companies and usual sleights of hand. He had a map of clandestine flows of cash, an electronic trail that branched like a monstrous bloodstream through DESIST’s memory boards. Cuddy had pieces of operations he could grasp, microbytes of proof. If a hundred million dollars suddenly appeared on Cuddy’s screen, the Hungarian treasury was as good as found.

The movement of Krucevic’s money sketched a tantalizing tale. It was VaccuGen, Cuddy suspected, that
broke the peace in Belfast; VaccuGen that nurtured militia camps in Montana and Khmer Rouge bases in Laos. Wherever a nationalist cause could thrive, there went Krucevic’s money. Cuddy could map the flow of funds, but he lacked names for the networks and hard proof of what Krucevic bought.

“You work on the Sharif problem,” he told Caroline now. “Keep the lid on Eric’s existence any way you can. I’ll fire up the database.”

The database. Where all the dirty secrets lived.

Access, Ms. Bisby. It’s what gets the high analytics every time.

Caroline felt suddenly afraid of all that Cuddy might find.

NINE
Budapest, 3:15
P.M.

M
IRJANA TARCIC HEARD THE NEWS
of István Lajta’s death while driving over the Széchenyi Lánchíd, the Chain Bridge, one of Budapest’s most beautiful landmarks. At night it was illuminated by a blaze of white lights, linking Buda and Pest, so that first-time travelers to the city on the Danube immediately thought of Paris. But today the bridge seemed ugly, a steel scrawl against the muddy brown river and the rain-washed towers of the lower city. It looked like what it was, an aging feat of engineering, its curvilinear heights a perfect platform for the launching of suicides.

Mirjana was stuck in traffic. She eased forward a few feet, braked, and closed her eyes. István Lajta had been a young man. Younger than herself. What kind of despair drove a person to fire a bullet into his own brain? Even in the deepest valleys of her shadowed life, Mirjana had never considered suicide. Death was an abyss. She could not steel herself to peer over the edge.

The constant brutality of her years with Mlan had taught her a stubborn survival, if only to disappoint him.
She’d clung to the edge of the cliff with her fingernails, and when Mlan approached to kick her hands from the edge, she’d clawed another hold.

Lajta had left two children. The fool. The self-obsessed, ambitious young fool. No one should abandon a child.

Mirjana’s heart lurched, and with it the car. She had taken her foot off the clutch and the engine stalled. Behind her, a man at the wheel of a late-model blue Mercedes leaned on his horn and gestured rudely at her rearview mirror. A Mercedes. They were everywhere in Buda now, silver hood ornaments rising like latter-day coats of arms for a new governing class. She scowled at the man, at his perfect Italian suiting and his silk tie, and struggled with the ignition.

Jozsef.
Had she abandoned Jozsef as utterly as István Lajta had deserted his two sons? She had lied to Béla Horváth. She
did
live in hope of seeing Jozsef again. Hope was a fever that burned deep in the heart of her silent nights, her sleepwalking days. Hope was almost as scalding as her thirst for revenge.

She drove on, diving toward the neat squares of the administrative district farther up the river. Beyond them was Béla’s lab. She badly wanted to know what he had learned about vaccine No. 413.

But she had not gone four blocks before her way was barred.

People milled around the square in front of the old Hungarian Stock Exchange building; they were shouting and chanting in front of the National Bank, where Lajta’s body had been found. A line of police, outfitted like astronauts uncertain of the atmosphere, presented riot shields and helmets to the crowd.

Mirjana rolled down her window and tugged at the
sleeve of a protester sprawled across her bumper. The man glared at her through the windshield.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“It’s a protest. About that swine, Lajta.”

“István Lajta?”

“The
szarházi senki
ripped off the treasury. And where’s the money gone, I’d like to know! Where’s my life savings?”

Szarházi senki.
The shithouse nobody. István Lajta had fallen far from his days of glory at the University of Chicago.

The enraged protester pushed himself off Mirjana’s hood and scrabbled for a paving stone.

“Forget these pissing sods,” she shouted back. “Get to your bank and withdraw your money before it’s too late.”

“I already tried.” The man ran forward to join a surging mass near a shop window. The glass strained under the pressure of too many bodies; an unseen hand hurled a beer bottle; the plate glass shattered like ice. The looting had begun.

Mirjana leaned on her horn. The car in front of her was submerged in a wave of protesters. And as she stared past its terrified driver, a slender woman in the tired uniform of the working class—cheap raincoat, cheaper shoes—clubbed a policeman with the pointed end of her bright red umbrella. The policeman raised his nightstick and slammed it down on his attacker’s head. The woman crumpled, openmouthed, at his feet. There was an instant’s pause in the crowd’s roar—then the bodies surged forward like a herd of wildebeest on stampede. They flung themselves at the helmeted line, and the billy clubs rose and fell. Mirjana’s heart thudded painfully in her chest. It would be a matter of seconds before tear gas and rubber bullets filled the square.

She threw her car into reverse and glanced over her shoulder. And what she saw sickened her.

A band of construction workers had pulled open the door of the blue Mercedes. One was smashing the windshield with a rock. Two others attempted to roll the vehicle on its side. And the rest—three men and a woman—had the driver down on the ground. He screamed as the steel-capped boots thudded brutally against his ribs. Mirjana reached over to the car’s glove compartment and pulled out her handgun. She would not endure a pack of wolves.

She thrust herself out of the car, whispering a prayer that it would not be engulfed by the milling crowd, and pushed her way through the grunting workers. They had moved from kicking their victim to punching his face. It was a mask of blood. He looked, Mirjana thought, unconscious. Or perhaps he was already dead.

“Stop it, you sons of bitches, before I blow your heads off!” she screamed, and fired her gun in the air. No one looked up. She fired again.

The sound brought riot police on the run. The attackers turned to fight them, and instantly Mirjana was caught in the furious crush. She fought it, gasped, lost her gun and her footing, and went down.

Paul Dougherty parked the plumber’s van in the garage of an Agency safe house in Spandau twenty minutes after leaving Schloss Tegel. He and Fred changed back into their suits behind the living room’s drawn blinds, then left by the rear door and caught the S-Bahn into town.

Caroline, Wally and Tom waited for them in the station vault. They pulled up chairs and prepared to listen
to Mahmoud Sharif’s phone call—the call he had made while smoking a cigarette in the deserted parking lot of Schloss Tegel.

“I called the head of our Berlin Task Force an hour ago,” Caroline told Fred. “He has a lead on Sharif’s bona fides.” It was a patent lie, but Cuddy had told her to hold the lid on the Sharif problem any way she could. Bona fides, as everyone in Intelligence knew, were passwords you threw at your opposite number to test whether he was legitimate. “He may use the names Michael and Jane.”

“Good,” Wally said briskly. “We’ve got Fun with Mike and Jane. Let’s roll.”

Fred had attached the tape recorder to a small device that translated electronic pulses into numbers; within seconds, they would know exactly where Sharif had dialed. Fred pushed the play button. Caroline’s mouth went dry.

Two rings, and then a woman’s voice, prerecorded. Sharif had reached an answering machine.

“What language is that?” Shephard asked Caroline.

“Something Slavic, I think.”

Sharif’s amplified breathing filled the room. They waited for the beep. When it came, the bomb maker said in English,
“This is a message for Michael.”

Wally leaned closer to the box.

“Thanks for asking after the children. They’re all fine, particularly our little girl.”

“Bastard hasn’t got a little girl,” muttered Fred.

“Shush.”

“She would love to visit whenever you’re ready for her. Speaking of visits, I saw your friend Jane this morning. Jane Hathaway,”
Sharif repeated, with emphasis. Shephard scribbled the name on a legal pad.

“Jane sends her love. She will be at the Budapest Hilton if you want her, Michael—but I advise you to take extreme care. Once these women get their claws into you, it is as much as your life is worth to break free. Look at me! Go with God, brother.”

And then he broke the connection.

Fred tossed a slip of paper at Wally. “The number’s in Budapest. Registered to the name of Tarcic. Is that Hungarian?”

“No,” Caroline said numbly, “it’s Serbian.”

“Tarcic,” Wally repeated. “Isn’t that—”

“The name of Krucevic’s ex-wife? Yes.”

“I thought those two hated each other. Why would Sharif use a contact number manned by Mirjana Tarcic?”

In a blaze of hope and disbelief, Caroline suddenly understood.
Because Mirjana’s not working for Mlan Krucevic. She’s working
against
him. For Eric.

“There could be a hundred different women in Budapest with that name, Wally,” she said carefully. “It may have nothing to do with the ex-wife.”

“Oh, right.” He rolled his eyes.

But even she didn’t believe it. Of
course
the two women were the same. Forget the years of loss, the unspeakable betrayal, the pain and the anger; Caroline knew how Eric’s mind worked. He was adept at manipulation. He instantly sensed weakness and turned it to advantage. If
Caroline
had seen the possibilities of Mirjana Tarcic—how the woman could be used, targeted against her husband—it was obvious that Eric would be ten steps and at least two years ahead of her.

“Maybe the breakup is false,” Wally muttered. “A cover operation for something else.”

“That might explain why she let Krucevic take the
kid,” suggested Tom Shephard. “Because she’s been seeing him all along.”

“Fred,” Wally said, “get Budapest on the line. We need to find this woman
now
.”

A bubble of panic rose in Caroline’s chest.
The net is tightening. Find Mirjana and you find Eric. But most important, you might find Vice President Payne
—and that was the job she had been sent out to do.
No choice, no possible way to save them both.
Her throat was throttled with unspoken words. She had laid the trap, and he was walking into it.

“Who the hell is Jane Hathaway?” Shephard asked. “Sharif’s contact with Krucevic? Is Krucevic using the name Michael?”

“The names don’t mean anything.” Wally was impatient. “Sharif just worked them into the message. I’d say the point of the call was the Budapest Hilton.” He took the phone Fred Leicester offered. “Vic? How’re things on the ground? … That bad? It’s what you signed up for. Listen—I’ve got a number you need to trace. The woman’s a suspect in the Payne kidnapping. And put a team on the Hilton, okay? We think it’s where 30 April is meeting—”