The Cutout (43 page)

“Where are you?” the station chief asked.

“The Hauptbahnhof,” Anatoly replied. “I need to talk to you.”

“About Lajta?”

Anatoly nodded, as though the man might be able to see his face across the rat’s maze of city streets. “I’m scared to death,” he told him softly. “I’ve got to get out. You’ve got to get me
out
.”

“You’re still alive. Calm down, Anatoly.”

“He threatened my wife. My girls.”

“I understand.”

“Wally—” The Russian safecracker hesitated, his pride still strong. “I have something for you. In exchange for my safety. I have it here, right now. I will give it to you.” His voice rose and broke, which was utterly unlike him. “But you must
help
me—”

“Wait there,” the station chief interrupted curtly. “Buy your ticket to Hamburg and wait. I’ll find you on the platform.”

Anatoly hung up. He glanced around. Two o’clock in the morning in Berlin’s busiest terminus, and the place was almost deserted. He saw an old man in a newsboy cap, snoring on a bench. A kid in black leather, the arms cut raggedly away—probably a heroin addict, his eyes had the look of death in them. And a woman. A tired woman with two worn suitcases and a rumpled paperback. She was standing alone on the platform as though she had nowhere to go. And he had thought this morning that she was bound for home.

Their eyes met across the distance. Strange, Anatoly thought, that she had chosen a smoking car from Budapest when she had not lit a cigarette all day.

He picked up his duffel bag and walked casually toward the men’s room, praying it would be empty. It was. He walked into the echoing tiled space, registered the window high in the wall. He picked a stall at random and locked it behind him. His fingers, when he unzipped the duffel, were trembling like a drunk’s.

Inside was a change of clothing, two packs of Russian clove cigarettes, a magazine. And tucked into the bottom, a sheaf of folded papers. He drew them out.

There were footsteps in the bathroom now, the sound of a urinal flushing. The toilet was old-fashioned, its tank bolted under the ceiling with a chain dangling. Anatoly reached up and pulled the flush. Then he closed
his eyes for an instant. Muttered something between a curse and a prayer.

Outside on the platform, Greta Oppenheimer discarded her paperback and walked briskly toward the men’s bathroom.

Wally Aronson had spent the past two hours and twenty-nine minutes in a landfill twelve miles outside of Berlin. Old Markus had led the station chief and a team of six FBI evidence technicians into the site, and Old Markus was still there, a rented van at his back and an ancient Mauser rifle in his arms. Old Markus had an acute sense of where the Brandenburg evidence had been dumped; he had taken pictures of the trucks during daylight hours.

Wally clipped the chain-link metal fence and removed a section large enough for the team’s infiltration. Spotlights were out of the question. So was extensive examination of the evidence. The Bureau people had decided simply to cart the largest pieces out of the landfill in the hired van for testing at a remote location: an abandoned U.S. Army base in what had once been the Western Sector of Berlin.

The mood among the collection team—four men and two women—was somber. What evidence they might succeed in retrieving would never be admissible in court; it was tainted by removal from the bomb site. But the clandestine trip had helped the frustrated Forensics people put their time to use. And the larger pieces might reveal something of value—stress patterns, fractures, explosive residues—that would shape the FBI’s investigation of the bombing. The darkness and disorder of the dump, however, banished all hope of
finding anything small. Like the timing device of a bomb.

Wally and the others were tense, waiting for a klaxon alarm, the release of dogs and floodlights, or the disappearance of one of their number into a mountain of stinking refuse. Wally had the most to lose: While the Forensics people would merely be sent home on the next available plane, Wally, as station chief, could be publicly humiliated if he were caught. But the landfill was deserted. Whoever had ordered the evidence removed from the Brandenburg Gate had not troubled with it further.

Wally tucked his cell phone back into the pocket of his black windbreaker. He had never heard Anatoly Rubikov sound so desperate; he would have to drive back to the Hauptbahnhof right now.

“Markus,” he told the foreign-service national, “I’m counting on you, buddy. See that these people get back to the ranch, okay?”

Sirens were wailing but the police had not yet arrived by the time Wally reached the train station. A kid in black leather was crouched in the doorway of the men’s bathroom, groaning as though he was going to vomit. Wally stepped over him and saw the blood just beyond his black-jeaned legs, the corpse in a heap by the open stall door.

“Scheisse,”
he muttered in German.

Anatoly had been stabbed. The thin-bladed knife was still buried in his chest.

The boy in leather hadn’t done it, Wally knew that. The bathroom window was open. Whoever had cut his joe to the heart must have left that way. Wally studied the Russian safecracker, the sprawl of his limbs, the way
he had fallen, and resisted the impulse to close Anatoly’s eyes.

There was not much time.

Wally tugged his winter gloves from his coat pockets and slipped them on. The boy in leather looked up, eyes blank with fear. “I’d get out of here,” Wally told him in German. “Unless you want to talk to the police.”

The kid stumbled to his feet and ran.

Wally stepped over Anatoly’s body and looked into the stall. There should have been a bag—some sort of overnight piece—but there was nothing. No luggage to suggest he had been traveling from Budapest. Wally studied the stall. The lid of the tank was slightly askew.

He jumped up and lifted the porcelain cover. Groped inside with his gloved fingers. And then his expression changed.

The two-note klaxon of an ambulance siren rent the night air.

Wally pulled the sheaf of papers out of the toilet tank and slid them inside his coat.

TWO
Budapest, 1:23
A.M.

T
ONIO WAS SNORING
by the time Michael drove up to the underground garage. He punched a key code into a remote-control device mounted on the dashboard and the electronic doors slid open. He pulled inside, and the doors closed automatically behind him. It was then he saw that the space reserved for Mlan’s Mercedes was empty.

He killed the Audi’s engine, feeling his skin prickle. Krucevic was still mobile. Had he been arrested at the Budapest checkpoint? Or had he abandoned the two of them, Michael and Tonio, now that the Hungarian job was done?

The door to the compound was probably wired to blow.

He glanced over his shoulder at the sealed electronic garage doors, fighting the urge to panic, to gun the Audi in reverse right through them. Think.
Think.

Krucevic had said nothing about an errand tonight. That was hardly unusual. He never shared his plans until they were ready to activate.

But maybe he had learned at last who Michael really was. Maybe he, Michael, had been betrayed. By an overeager Sophie Payne, or perhaps …

He thought suddenly of Béla Horváth, of the unhappy Mirjana. Obvious risks, to themselves and him. His message might have come too late.

You’ve had too much time, you son of a bitch!

Tonio muttered in an alcoholic dream, his head lolling toward the armrest.

Michael eased open the door. There was a chance he could discover whether the compound was sabotaged before it killed them.

He crept up to the entrance, every nerve in his body screaming. There was no red pinpoint beam of a laser to break, just the camera focused as usual, recording his stealth; he would have to explain that later. He ran his fingers around the doorjamb—no thin copper wire. And no discernible sound from within.

The only way he would know was to attempt it.

He pressed a second code into a keypad by the door, held his finger against a print detector, and waited for the electronic verification.

The door slid open.

Whatever fate awaited him, it was not on this threshold. He went inside.

Jozsef’s good-luck charm was resting forgotten on the table in the main room. A curious lapse; he was never without it. Michael pocketed the rabbit’s foot and walked down the corridor to his door. It was sealed shut.

“Jozsef? Jozsef?” He raised his hand to knock just as the boy’s voice came groggily from beyond.

“Is that you, Michael? What time is it?”

“Nearly two. Go back to sleep. There’s nothing to be worried about.”

So Krucevic had abandoned them, locked into their windowless cells, the boy and Sophie Payne. Necessity must have driven him. Michael felt a stab of fear for Béla Horváth. If Mlan were to suspect—

He strode back to the main room. Tonio was still snoring in the car. Now for the computer. The payment for Caroline’s lost years.

He understood far less about the files than Tonio, of course, but he had been watching, secretly, how the man manipulated his data. He knew how to unlock the keyboard’s secrets. Mlan changed the password every day, and only Tonio was privy to it; but Michael had watched his fingers that morning. He thought he could repeat the strokes.

He sat down in front of the laptop. The password was
chaos
today, he was certain—but entry was denied. Had he inverted the
a
and the
o
? Michael swore aloud. Three failed attempts, and the computer would destroy its own hard disk. He willed his fingers to stop shaking and tried again.

This time, like the door to Ali Baba’s cave, the way opened. He began to search among the treasures scattered haphazardly on the thieves’ floor.

“Michael,” the voice said behind him.

He jumped involuntarily and snapped the computer lid shut.
Stupid! Stupid not to be more on my guard.
“Mrs. Payne. You should be asleep. How did you get out of your room?”

“Jozsef He has a remote, did you know?”