The Cutout

by Francine Mathews

  “Sit down,” Cuddy said, “and plug in Eric’s alias.”

  “Which one?” she asked.

  He raised an eyebrow. “I only knew one.”

  “In Budapest, he was using ‘Michael O’Shaughnessy.’”

  “Try it.”

  “But you know there are no Americans listed in this database,” she protested. “It’s illegal for the CIA to track U.S. citizens.”

  Cuddy shrugged. “Does a dead man have citizenship? Try it, Mad Dog.”

  She typed in the name. The computer thought about it for a split second. And then it spat out two words, Mahmoud Sharif, and a phone number. She wrote down the number and plugged it into the database. Nothing. She glanced at Cuddy.

  “Try just ‘Sharif.’”

  Obediently, she ran the name through the system. An extensive file reeled out. “‘Hizballah bomb maker,’” she read, “‘legally resident in Berlin.’”

  “Sharif is believed responsible for that series of bombs the BKA found last March,” Cuddy told her. The BKA—the Bundeskriminalamt—was the German equivalent of the FBI. “He’d wired them into electronics—television sets, stereo components, laptop computers—and stored them in an abandoned apartment in Frankfurt.”

  “I remember that,” Caroline said. The BKA had confiscated seven of the bombs safely; an eighth had exploded in the act of being defused. Two men had died. “Why didn’t he go down for it?”

  “Sympathetic judge. Circumstantial evidence.”

  “I see.”

  “German Intelligence is convinced Sharif made twelve bombs. So where are the other four?”

  “Underneath the Brandenburg?”

  Cuddy shrugged. “Ask Sharif, he’ll say he knows nothing about electronics. He’s just a carpenter with a German wife and a kid named Moammar.”

  “Aren’t they all. I guess the phone number wasn’t his, or it’d be in the file.”

  “The phone is disconnected. I walked down to the Exxon station on Chain Bridge Road twenty minutes ago and dialed it.”

  “So if it’s not Sharif’s …”

  “It’s Michael O’Shaughnessy’s. Got it in one.” He pulled up a chair next to her. “Last August, Sharif was shaken down by Israeli airport security when he tried to fly from Frankfurt to Malta. They pulled his address book, Xeroxed it, and sent the contents here. Somebody—a Career Trainee, probably, who never heard of Michael O’Shaughnessy and couldn’t have known it was an Agency alias—entered the name into the database.”

  “We don’t know how old this information is,” Caroline hedged. “People keep numbers in their black books for years. Maybe Eric made legitimate contact with Sharif years ago. Maybe he targeted him for recruitment.”

  “It was a datebook, Caroline. Sharif bought it last January. Nothing in there is less than current. He talked to Eric sometime this year. And that disconnected phone was in Berlin.”

  “You think they planned this,” she said. “That Eric was in Berlin and recruited Sharif to build the device that took out the Gate. Why, Cuddy? Why would a Palestinian do anything for a neo-Nazi like Krucevic?”

  “Who said it was Krucevic? All I saw was Eric in a helicopter. Anyone could have been flying it, Caroline. You know that.”

  “But, Cuddy—”

  “It could have been anybody,” he interrupted. “We won’t know who snatched the Veep until they make contact. And once they do—whether it’s Osama bin Laden or Hizballah or, yes, 30 April—the FBI will be in charge of the investigation.”

  “You just want this whole thing to go away, don’t you?” Her voice was brittle with frustration.

  “Of course!” he burst out. “Isn’t that what any sane person would want? Or have you had the time of your life today, Carrie, hiding in the women’s bathroom?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said inadequately.

  “Don’t hope for good things, Mad Dog. They’re just not thick on the ground.”

  NINE

  Prague, 5:52 P.M.

  MRS. PAYNE.”

  A harsh voice, faintly mocking. Sophie turned her hooded head and groped vainly for a face. A piercing light penetrated the cloth masking her eyes; nothing else did.

  “Help the lady out, Michael.”

  A firm pair of hands under her armpits, and she was hoisted free of the box in which she had traveled now for unreckoned hours. She groaned at the bruising pain of it; her tethered wrists, pulled obscenely behind her back, had gone numb.

  The unseen Michael half thrust, half carried her along a smooth surface, probably concrete. A pathway— toward what, exactly?—cold and pitted under her stockinged feet. She was still wearing the suit she had chosen for the embassy inaugural.

  It must be spattered with Nell Forsyte’s blood. Sophie’s throat tightened, torn between the desire to retch and the need to sob. Nell was dead. She, Sophie, was alive. That should have been comforting—but Sophie was no fool. The men who had abducted her would attempt to bargain for her life. And much as he liked and respected her, the President would never negotiate with terrorists.

  The air was sharp and chill. She felt the weak sunlight fade, had a palpable sense of passing indoors. A short, stumbling flight of stairs, a stubbed toe. Her son Peter’s laugh rang suddenly in her ears—infectious, still young, the faintest edge of her dead husband in its timbre. What did Peter know of her fate? Was he frantically calling the White House, demanding information— leaving New Haven on an afternoon train, with just an ATM card in his pocket?

  She was thrust abruptly into a straight-backed chair; they left her that way for an instant. Then the hood was pulled off, charging her hair with static electricity. She looked around, blinking in the ruthless light of bare bulbs. A windowless room, probably a cellar of some sort, with carpeting and a few pieces of functional furniture. Doorways led to who-knew-where—but one of them, certainly, to the outside.

  Four men, ranged around the room, gazed at her impassively.

  “Mrs. Payne.”

  The voice came from behind. She turned and looked into a face she knew could never be Michael’s. Michael was the American who had driven the car. This man was not an American.

  Black hair, close-cropped as a marine’s and balding in the center. A harshly beaked nose, small brown eyes under curved brows. Sallow skin. A frankly sensual mouth. His body was compact and powerful, his hands too large for his wrists. He wore gray flannel trousers and a sweater; without touching it, she knew it was cashmere. She had expected a black turtleneck. Something to go with the handgun he slung casually in his shoulder holster.

  He squatted down before her chair. A faint odor of aftershave—sandalwood and lime—and cigarette smoke. A scar like an arrow in the short hairs at his temple. Not a knife wound—a bullet, perhaps? She lacked the experience to say.

  “You look relatively unscathed.”

  She resisted the impulse to answer. The tape over her mouth could only make her ridiculous. But she kicked upward sharply and without warning, landing a foot directly in his crotch; he fell backward with a cry of pain. Before Michael or one of the others could react, he had rolled to his feet and whipped the gun from its sheath. The barrel bit into Sophie’s forehead.

  “Mlan,” one of the men said in warning.

  He stared into Sophie’s eyes, completely composed. Then he slid the gun back into its holster. “Tape, Vaclav.”

  A middle-aged man with a cherub’s face silently produced a roll of black electrical tape.

  With infinite care, the man named Mlan crouched once more at Sophie’s feet. He held her gaze deliberately, daring her to kick him again, while he slid the hem of her narrow skirt up to her thighs. Then he lashed one ankle to the right chair leg with tape, the other to the left.

  That quickly, she was exposed, knees sprawled wide, helpless to cover herself. He had chosen his retaliation well; mere physical violence would have strengthened her. This was a humiliation so casual and calculated it almost made her weep.

  “I should have explained
something,” he said. “I am difficult to provoke.” He reached for the tape covering her mouth and tore it off. Sophie cried out—then looked away, ashamed.

  “I should also have introduced myself,” he added, wadding the tape into a compact ball and handing it without a word to Vaclav. “My name is Mlan Krucevic. That will probably mean nothing to you.”

  “On the contrary,” she said clearly, “I know a great deal about you, Mr. Krucevic. It’s hard to follow the Balkans or terrorism without running into your name. But then, neo-Nazism and its psychotics are particular concerns of mine.”

  He rose, still poised between her knees. “A Vice President who can read. How intriguing.”

  Sophie looked up at him coolly. “You didn’t know? And I thought you did your homework.”

  “Oh, I have, Mrs. Payne. More than was conceivably necessary. One might say I know everything about you. But then, democracy and its decline are particular concerns of mine.”

  “Then you must know that I, too, am difficult to provoke.”

  “Perhaps. But I didn’t destroy the Brandenburg Gate and kill a number of innocent people merely to provoke you, Mrs. Payne.”

  “If you’re thinking this will have the slightest impact on Jack Bigelow,” she said, “you’re mistaken.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Then it will be the first time in a long life.”

  “There is always a first time, Mr. Krucevic.”

  “Of course,” he said thoughtfully. “But what was your mistake, Mrs. Payne? Coming to Berlin? Or running for public office? Who are you, really, but the sum of your errors and lies?”

  He began to pace before her, a professor in front of a half-filled lecture hall. The four men stationed around the room stood at attention, their eyes following Krucevic.

  “We should start, I suppose, with the official dossier. You are forty-three years old, the daughter of German intellectuals. Your parents emigrated to the United States in 1933. Your father was a journalist—a clever man with words, educated for a time at Oxford, comfortable in English as well as German. Your mother was the daughter of a wealthy German porcelain manufacturer who lost most of his money after World War One. She was raised, regardless, in an atmosphere of privilege.

  “We both know that your father was a Jew who renounced his faith and pretended to adopt your mother’s beliefs. He even changed his name from Friedman to Freeman once he got to the United States. But that sort of posturing would never have saved his life, Mrs. Payne, or even your mother’s. Had your parents remained in Berlin in 1933, you would not have been born.”

  “You’re out of your mind.” Whatever Sophie had expected from Krucevic—threats, intimidation, even physical harm—it had not been this. “My parents were Lutherans. They had friends who died in the Resistance. For years they struggled with guilt—thinking they should have stayed in Germany and fought Hitler to the end.”

  “That may be what they told you,” Krucevic retorted, “but they lied. Your father was a Jew. His people died in Bergen-Belsen and he did absolutely nothing to save them. I have seen the records, Mrs. Payne.”

  “Bullshit,” Sophie spat out.

  Krucevic thrust his face mere inches from her own. There was a new malevolence in his eyes, naked pleasure at her subjugation. “Let’s just call that your first mistake.”

  He began to pace again. “After four years at Radcliffe, you did the expected thing: You married a graduate of Harvard Business School, one Curtis Payne, the son of an old Philadelphia family, what your people call ‘Main Line.’ How amusing it must have been to trip down the aisle in Episcopal splendor, a mongrel brat! And when poor Curtis died of cancer during his first term in Congress, you took over his seat and parlayed it into a term in the Senate.” He ticked off the points on his fingertips. “You have never remarried. You have a son named Peter at Yale. How have you managed it so long, Mrs. Payne—suppressing the truth of your past?”

  “I suppressed nothing,” Sophie said.

  “Liar!”

  “It’s the tendency of the madman to see his obsession wherever he looks, Krucevic. You know nothing about me.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Really! Then what if I tell you your shoe size is 7AA? Your preference in takeout, Thai soft-shell crabs—from a restaurant on Dupont Circle? That you mismanage your money and are chronically late in paying your credit card bills, that you’ve gone through three lovers in the past eighteen months? I know their names and the ways they made love to you. I know which were sincere and which were interested in fame. I know that one—the Republican senator—wanted to marry you. You declined gently, in part because of politics, and in part from consideration for the feelings of the senator’s wife. I should imagine your heart is not easily touched, Mrs. Payne, however available the rest of you.”

  He stared pointedly at her spread knees. The stripping sense of exposure. She stared back, hating him.

  “There is nothing to tracking a woman like you,” he said softly, “a woman who lives in the public eye. My watchers were simply lost in the crowd. But even in your shower at the Naval Observatory, Mrs. Payne, you were never truly alone.”

  A frisson of fear, like a spider crossing her neck. “So you chose me to kidnap,” Sophie said briskly, as though some sort of deal had been struck. “You spent the money and the time. I suppose this is about revenge for the NATO air strikes against Belgrade. Am I right?”

  But Krucevic was staring at his watch; he had already dismissed her. “Otto—bring in the boy. It’s time for his shot.”

  One of the silent men—bald, muscular—disappeared through a door behind Sophie. So he was not Michael, either. That left two possibilities: the curly-haired weasel with the nervous face, or the lean blond with the day-old growth of beard. The latter had kept his eyes trained upon her through most of the interview, and curiously, his watchful stillness had given her strength. He was Michael, she was sure of it. She smiled faintly at him; his gaze shifted to Krucevic.

  The door behind Sophie opened again. A child’s voice, sharp and high-pitched with fear. “Please, Papa! Not the needle! I promise I’ll be good—I promise.”

  Sophie craned her neck around and saw them: the powerful bodyguard, and the boy rigid with apprehension. Unruly dark hair fell like a protective screen over his wide gray eyes; from the frailness of his body, Sophie thought he might be about ten. He had called Krucevic his father, and now the man was reaching for a syringe.

  Involuntarily, Sophie strained against her bonds.

  “Now, Jozsef—we talked about this before,” Krucevic said soothingly. With one hand he stroked the boy’s pale cheek; the other held the hypodermic. “For the good of the cause, remember? You want to make me proud. The thigh, Otto, I think.”

  In one deft movement, Otto thrust the boy face downward on the floor and pinned him there. Krucevic sank the needle into the flesh of his son’s leg.

  Jozsef cried out.

  “You bastard,” Sophie hissed. “What have you done to him?”

  Krucevic twisted his fingers in her hair and pulled her face close to his own. “Nothing I wouldn’t do to you, Mrs. Payne. Given time.”

  TEN

  Washington, 2:31 P.M.

  JACK BIGELOW’S COWBOY-BOOTED FEET were propped on his broad mahogany desk. Like many men who had come late in life to Texas, he made a point of embracing its eccentricities. But then, Texas had given him the presidency.

  “I’ve got the director of our Federal Bureau of Investigation here, Fritz,” he said, “and a few other folks who’d like to hear what you have to say. So I’m going to put you on the speakerphone. That okay with you?”

  “Of course, Jack.” The German chancellor’s voice sounded remote and disembodied.

  Dare Atwood immediately discounted anything the man might say. Someone comfortable with an audience of unknowns, in a room he couldn’t see, was hardly planning to bare his soul.

  “I have to tell you, Fritz, I’m just sorrier’n I can spit about the mess
you’ve got over there in Berlin,” Bigelow drawled.

  “A tragedy,” Voekl replied, “for both Berlin and the German nation. It is our Oklahoma City.” He spoke English too carefully, caressing each syllable before releasing it with regret.

  “Any word of Vice President Payne?” Bigelow asked.

  “Jack, I regret to tell you that I have no news to offer. None of the hospitals in Berlin has admitted Mrs. Payne as a patient, and the medical helicopter itself has not yet been located. We are doing everything in our power, of course.”

  “Sure you are.” Bigelow’s shrewd eyes, utterly devoid of their usual warmth, slid over to Dare. “And you’re still goin  with the notion of these Turks, Fritz? As the responsible parties, I mean?”

  “Every indication at the bomb site would lead me to believe that the Turks are responsible, yes. We are confident of an arrest very soon.”

  “Once our FBI boys get over there—excuse me, boys and girls, Fritz, don’t want to be sexist if I can help it— maybe we’ll get a better handle on what’s goin’ on. We’re sendin’ out a team tonight, should be there by dawn tomorrow.”

  “That is excellent news, Jack.” Voekl said it woodenly “You must know, however, that we are very well equipped to manage the crisis. We have been expecting some reprisal from the Turks for some time. They are unhappy with the stringency of our program of repatriation.”

  “Naturally,” Bigelow tossed back, as though he had never trashed the German repatriation program on television worldwide, “and when folks are unhappy, Fritz, no tellin’ what they’ll do. Now let’s us just suppose for a minute that we’ve got a different group of unhappy people runnin’ around Berlin. Turks’d make real good whipping boys, wouldn’t you say, for anybody else operating in the region?”