The Cutout (45 page)

“Wally Aronson sends his regards,” she told him.

“I’ve already talked to Wally this morning.”

“Then he’s up early,” Shephard said.

“I’m not sure he ever went to bed.” Vic looked appraisingly at Caroline. “He thinks a hell of a lot of you.”

Tom Shephard was staring through the embassy’s front window at the garrisoned square below. “Are those Hungarian tanks?”

“Yes,” Marinelli said tersely, “but only a few Hungarians are manning them. Most of those men are Germans. They arrived this morning. The prime minister asked for NATO help two hours before he resigned. He was refused.” The station chief’s eyes flicked over to Caroline’s. “You’ve heard about the provisional government, of course?”

“Not a word. Tell us.”

Marinelli led them down a high-ceilinged corridor, past the state drawing rooms and the ambassador’s suite. “Hungarian Pride has formed a cabinet. They seem to have anticipated the treasury heist.”

Hungarian Pride was a right-wing faction led by a charismatic and highly articulate history professor named Georg Korda. The group had never boasted significant power, but their nationalist, pro-cleansing rhetoric had steadily gained adherents.

“Korda’s hitting the former government over the head for incompetence, and calling for economic austerity. As though belt tightening can protect you from electronic plunder.” Marinelli grimaced.

“You believe it, then?” Caroline asked. “That Lajta embezzled the treasury before he killed himself?”

“Somebody did,” he said curtly.

The door of the station suggested a closet tucked into the second-floor landing, something to be overlooked. Marinelli waited for her to precede him, arm outstretched in a gesture of courtesy; this was, after all, his domain. But in Caroline’s mind it would always be Eric’s. She stepped past him.

Every moldy smell, every curling bit of plaster, every length of electrical wire glimpsed under an upturned
edge of carpet screamed to her of the days that were gone. Eric had ruled this station for a while—he had breathed, drunk, and ingested it for the length of his tour—and if the soul of that dead time could be said to live anywhere, it was here in the Budapest embassy.

“Okay,” Marinelli said, shutting the door behind them, “here’s the state of play. DBTOXIN—Béla Horváth—was found shot to death in his laboratory this morning. His house and the lab were thoroughly ransacked.”

“Then he’s been blown.” The sick feeling of disaster tightened Caroline’s shoulder blades.

“I’d like to think it was a coincidence, something to do with the riots. But the timing is too perfect. It looks to me as though Horváth was silenced.”

“By Krucevic?”

“Or his wife.” Marinelli gazed at her levelly “You know Wally Aronson passed on her number yesterday. A call came through while we were monitoring her line last night. It mentioned TOXIN’s first name.”

“What exactly did it say?” Shephard was frowning.

“‘It’s me. We’re in town. Tell Béla to watch his back. And for Christ’s sake, be careful,’”
Marinelli quoted.

Eric. It could be no one else.

“That sounds like a warning. Not a death threat.”

“Perhaps the caller is someone she betrayed,” Marinelli suggested. “Just like she betrayed Béla.”

“But the
we
makes it sound like one of the terrorists.” Shephard’s scowl had deepened.

“Or a different group altogether. We can’t know for certain.”
If Eric could not trust Mirjana Tarcic
, Caroline thought—but no, the very idea was absurd. The woman hated Mlan Krucevic. He had robbed her of her son.

“Is anything missing from Horváth’s lab? Or his house?” she asked Marinelli.

“Did they find what they were looking for, you mean? I don’t know. I’m trying to get that information from the Budapest police. I have a contact there, but with the riots, the looting—” He shook his head. “I suggested they get one of Horváth’s lab partners to go through his things with them. Tell them what might have been taken.”

“If Horváth is blown,” Tom asked, “do we assume that 30 April has already left Hungary?”

“I sure as hell hope not. Because Wally Aronson just came through with something brilliant.” Marinelli reached across his desk for a manila envelope. “Look at this.”

A sheaf of blueprints, overwritten with handwriting so fine it was almost impossible to read. Page after page of blueprints—perhaps a dozen in all. Caroline bent over the plans. “What are these?”

“The security details of Mlan Krucevic’s Budapest headquarters.”

“Jesus,” burst out Tom Shephard. “Has anyone called Washington?”

“Of course,” Marinelli said patiently.

“I suppose we owe this to old what’s-his-acronym,” Caroline murmured.

The station chief glanced at her sharply. “Wally got these blueprints from a developmental. A Russian security expert. He’s dead.”

Tom expelled a gusty breath. “This job just gets less and less healthy. So when do we storm the compound?”

“When we know where it is,” Marinelli said crisply.

Caroline and Tom exchanged a look.

“One person might be able to help us,” she said. “Mirjana Tarcic.”

“We can’t trust her.” Marinelli dismissed the notion instantly. “It’s probable that she betrayed Horváth. If we contact her and she warns Krucevic, he’ll be long gone by the time we arrive.”

“But Tarcic is all we’ve got.”

Marinelli opened his mouth to argue and then abruptly closed it as the truth of Caroline’s words hit home.

Tom looked up from the blueprints. “Are the Buda police searching for this woman?”

Marinelli’s eyes shifted away. “I don’t know. Maybe they are.”

Which meant, Caroline thought, that they certainly were. Marinelli had given his police source Mirjana Tarcic—an even trade for the man’s information about Horváth.

“Perhaps we should get to her first,” Shephard mused. “Control the situation. The Vice President’s fate demands that much.”

“I have to agree.” And for the first time, Marinelli’s medieval face wore a troubled expression. Had he begun to doubt himself?

“Maybe I can help,” Tom offered. “I’ve got contacts here at the Interior Ministry. The Hungarian FBI. Do you have a photograph of Tarcic, by any chance?”

The station chief did.

It was a candid shot, probably taken by a case officer through a car window. She was walking along a city street, muffled in a winter coat; but miraculously the photographer had gotten the angle right, and the woman’s face filled the frame. Lank dark hair, deep-set Balkan eyes—it was an arresting face, gaunt with middle age, hollow with anxiety.

Caroline passed the photograph to Tom Shephard.

He tapped it lightly with one finger.

“The federal police owe me some favors.”

“Let’s hope they can keep their mouths shut,” Marinelli said.

FIVE
The Danube Bend, 10:03
A.M.

S
ZENTENDRE WAS AN ANCIENT TOWN
of Byzantine Rite churches, all facing east; of artists and musicians and tourist kitsch. A small jewel of Balkan architecture, it had been founded in 1389, after the Turks won the Battle of Kosovo and the vanquished Serbs fled west and north. Like many places born of exile, it felt more authentic than the original. Most of the Serbs had returned to Belgrade four hundred years later, rather than swear allegiance to the Hapsburg Empire; but a few had remained. Mirjana Tarcic’s mother was descended from one of them.

She rented an apartment above an art gallery on Görög Utca, a steep and narrow street running down to the banks of the Danube. Two rooms, with wide-plank pine flooring and red woven rugs, wooden tables painted in the Hungarian folk fashion, and a galley kitchen hung about with antique copper butter molds. Skylights were cut into the sloping roof, and on days of bright sun the rugs fired crimson, the trailing flowers on the painted chair-backs leapt to vivid life. It was
a comfortable place for a single woman—or two women, when Mirjana drove out from the city for the weekend.

She had driven out a day early this time, because of the riots. She had driven out of Béla Horváth’s alley as though Mlan Krucevic were after her with a chain saw. She arrived at three A.M. and let herself into the apartment with her spare key. Four hours later, her mother found her asleep on the living-room sofa.

Béla Horváth’s body had not yet been discovered in the ruins of his lab. She was granted a period of ignorance.

Mirjana slept fitfully, despite the soothing drum of rain on the skylight glass. She awoke with a start to the slam of a door and knew that her mother had left for work. The older woman owned an antiques store on the main street of Szentendre, Fó Ter, a thriving business now that people had cash to spend.

It was already after ten o’clock.

Panic washed over Mirjana. She turned, threw off the wool blanket her mother had tucked around her, and searched frantically for the notebook and ampules. They were there still, on the floor at the sofa’s foot, where she had dropped them the night before.

The strong earthen smell of coffee pulled her to the kitchen. Her mind was still dazed with terror. Her ribs, cracked and tightly taped by a Budapest hospital, ached with every breath. Mlan Krucevic lurked in the corners of her brain, in the closets she forced him to occupy; he hammered loudly at her padlocked doors. He knew about her mother. He knew the apartment in Szentendre. What had she been thinking of to draw him this way?
Fool.
She had thrown herself down the Danube Bend in desperation, in the middle of the night, but she could not stay. Her mother—

Where
were
the ampules? The notebook? What time was it, now?

She stared crazily around the room, her throat swelling with fear, then saw them lying where she had left them—on the floor near the sofa.
Thank God.
She wasn’t losing her mind. She took a deep swallow of the coffee, choked, and spat it into the sink.

Why was she so afraid of him? He had done almost everything to her body that one man could do. If he killed her at last, it would be nothing more than a single moment of terror in the long line of such moments that had punctuated her life. She was not afraid of pain. She was terrified of
losing.
For once in her life she had the upper hand with Mlan Krucevic—she had the notebook and the ampules, she had knowledge and power over his life. She had a chance to take back Jozsef

She would find a safe place. She would hide herself and her mother. And then she would contact Mlan— somehow, there was always a way—and tell him what she knew. What she could give to the world, to the United States: the truth about vaccine No. 413.

And at last, after decades of torment and loss and terror, she would grind his balls under her heel, and wear cleats to do it. She would demand the return of her son.

And then? What then, Mirjana? You do not make deals with the devil. Because the devil always wins.

Where is the notebook? The ampules? Da bog sa
uva
—

There. Near the sofa.

She poured half the cup of coffee down the drain with shaking fingers. And at that moment, there was a knock on the door.

Mirjana went rigid. She could not breathe.

Another knock, louder this time.

And then the sound of a metal pick sliding into the lock.

There was no other way out of the apartment. She was trapped.

Mirjana tore wildly across the small room, whimpering deep in her throat, and snatched up the notebook and ampules.
He will not win.

She thrust Béla’s things under her mother’s mattress in a kind of frenzy. She had mounted a chair and unlocked the skylight by the time the front door was kicked open.

Shephard insisted on escorting Caroline past the Volksturm tanks and down Dorottya Utca toward Vörösmarty Ter.

“Are you coming with me?” he asked abruptly.

“To the Interior Ministry?” She was surprised. “I’d just cramp your style. These are
your
contacts, Shephard. You don’t need me hovering in the background. I require too much explanation.”