He searched his untidy bedroom, eyes straining in the dark. A light at this hour would be a mistake. He had taken a risk even returning to the house. At the thought of Mlan and what he would do if he knew of the notebook—if he knew of the meeting with Marinelli—Horváth’s fingers twitched spasmodically. He dropped the knapsack.
He had wanted this meeting, had almost initiated it when the city went up like a torch that afternoon and the laboratory had closed. He had suspected the truth at last tonight, he had tested and retested it out of thoroughness and disbelief, until with a scientist’s harsh honesty he understood. Someone had to stop it.
He had bicycled home along the usual streets, crowded with people shouting as they had not done since 1989, since 1956, but those had been questions of politics then—of something worth dying for. This was about money. The ugliness in people’s faces depressed him, and he wove in and out among the stalled cars, knapsack tight as a leech against his back, wondering what he hoped to save.
The chalk mark was a red slash trailing haphazardly across a concrete pillar, and for an instant, he was uncertain whether he had actually seen it. He stopped the bike and thrust his glasses higher on his nose, staring at the scrawl on the Vigadó concert hall. The signal was supposed to be done this way—but could it be a mistake? Something to do with the rioting? He was supposed to mark the opposite pillar himself, in blue chalk—he carried it always in a knapsack pocket—but the square, he noticed now, was blocked off by police. They were ranked shoulder to shoulder in front of Gerbeaud’s, the coffeehouse. Trapped patrons glared through the broad plate-glass windows; others perused their papers, bored. Horváth felt a bubble of laughter shatter inside him: How like the police to protect their pastry!
He had backed away from the Vigadó, turned out of Vörösmarty Ter, and pedaled home. When he called Mirjana’s answering machine, the message from Michael awaited him. He prayed that by now, Mirjana had safely left town.
The sound of breaking glass from the front of the house brought his head up sharply. The back door—
He crept out of the bedroom, turned left in the darkened hall, and saw the gloved hand snake through the shattered living-room window. They would have it open in seconds.
He sidestepped into the kitchen—and there, backlit in the alley streetlight, was the silent shape of a man. He was surrounded.
Horváth looked about wildly. He saw the too-obvious cupboards, the pathetic tray of cold supper his cleaning lady had prepared, the broom closet smelling sharply of vinegar and ammonia. He thrust the black knapsack behind a damp pail at the closet’s rear just as Krucevic entered the kitchen.
“Mlan,” Horváth said breathlessly, his back to the closet door. “Did you have to break my window?”
Krucevic smiled. “There are broken windows all over Budapest today. Besides, you didn’t answer my knock.”
“I never heard it,” he said. That was certainly true; he had been lost in a fever of his own making. Horváth gestured toward the tray, the limp slices of meat and the tepid vegetables covered in plastic. “I was just about to eat.”
“At midnight?”
“As you see. I—I was working late.”
“Poor Béla,” Krucevic said slowly. “Always the desperate grind. You should get away for a while. Take a break from all this.” He glanced at one of his men—a malevolent-looking bruiser with a shaved head—who stepped forward and took Horváth by the arm. “You haven’t said you’re glad to see me, Béla.”
“I was just surprised, Mlan, that’s all. You’re well?” The thug’s hand was like an iron cuff above his elbow.
“Strange,” Krucevic mused. “I’d have said you weren’t surprised at all. In fact, you looked like you were expecting me. Perhaps you’ll tell me why while we drive.”
“Drive?”
“To your lab. I’m afraid, Béla, you took something that does not belong to you. And now I want it back.”
Part IV
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 12
ONE
Berlin, 2 A.M.
ANATOLY RUBIKOV CARED NOTHING for the lateness of the hour. Nor for the dull headache that throbbed in his temples, or the sourness in his mouth. He called his wife in Hamburg from the main Berlin train station and felt a shaft of joy at her sleepy hello. Then he told her he loved her and promised he would see her in the morning.
Next he dialed Wally Aronson’s cellular phone. Wally answered on the second ring.
“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 woul
d 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.
TONIO 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?”
She swayed and clutched at the jamb. That quickly he was at her side. She looked ghastly.
“Here. Sit.” He helped her to a chair.
“I wish you would tell me why you’re pretending to be a terrorist,” she said plaintively as she sank into his seat. “I’m almost dead. I deserve to know.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m puking pieces of my stomach.”
“The medicine,” he said. “I’ll get you some. He’ll never know.”
“Don’t,” she called after him; but he was already in the passage, he had the code punched into the supply-room pad, and it was only when the door had slid open that he understood what she meant. Twelve dozen ampules lay smashed to powder on the floor.
“My God,” he groaned, and leaned against the door-jamb. “What have you done, Mrs. Payne?”
Her eyes blazed at him. “I’ve placed that boy’s life in jeopardy, and he helped me do it. I almost lacked the courage. But it had to be done. I had to force Krucevic’s hand. Jozsef says there’s no more medicine here. If he wants to save his son’s life, Krucevic must go back to Berlin. He’ll abort this insane campaign.”
Michael stared at her in wonder and pity. “He’ll slit your throat for this.”
“But not the throats of a million Muslims, and that is all that matters. I’ve been a dead woman since Tuesday.” She sank down to the floor, her back against the wall, and took a shuddering breath. “Would you kill me now? Like that little girl in Bratislava? Before he gets back
?”
“Mrs. Payne—”
“My name is Sophie. I do not think yours is really Michael, somehow.”
“Let me take you back to your room—”
“I’d rather die where I am,” she interrupted. “Now get out your gun, God damn it.”
“I can’t.”
“You must. I order you as the second in command of your country!”
He knelt down before her. “I told you once I would not let you die at this man’s hands. I’m certainly not going to kill you myself.”
“You won’t have to. Krucevic will.” Her eyes closed tightly; she drew a rattling breath. “Give me your gun, then.”
Michael put his hand under Sophie’s elbow. “Come on. Let’s get Jozsef We’ll leave now.”
Her eyes flew open. “Can you get out? Once you’re inside?”
“Of course.”
“Jozsef couldn’t.”
“Jozsef’s a prisoner,” he reminded her brutally. “I’m a jailor.” He crossed to the boy’s door and pounded on it, hard. “Jozsef. Hurry up and get dressed.”
“I can’t walk anywhere,” Sophie protested faintly. “I’ll just hold you back.”
“There’s a car in the garage. We’ll take that to the U.S. embassy. You’ll be in a hospital in an hour.”
The flash of joy that crossed her face was almost too painful to watch. “Why now?”
He held aloft his computer disk. “Because it’s all here—the entire 30 April Organization. In American hands, as of tonight.”
“But you won’t actually get him, will you?” she challenged. “Krucevic will escape. And he’ll wreak havoc for the rest of his days.”
“I’ll have saved you. That’s enough.”
Sophie shook her head. “Not for me.”
He started to speak—started to tell her that once she was returned safely to the United States, Fritz Voekl and Mlan Krucevic would have the World Court to contend with—but the lies died on his lips.
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