The Cutout

by Francine Mathews

  Tonio was standing in the doorway. How long had he been there? How much had he heard?

  “What’s going on, Michael?”

  “Nothing much. How’s your head?” He did not look at Sophie Payne.

  Tonio walked toward him, rubbing his eyes groggily “Dio, but it aches. I’m going to bed.” His eyes drifted over the room indifferently. They came to rest on the computer. “Who’s been messing with that?”

  Michael began to move easily behind him, coming around in position behind his head, the butt of his gun in his hand. It was a myth that you could knock a person out with a single blow; the human skull was extremely sturdy. It required a punishing force. Or a knock at the base of the cranium.

  “I turned it on,” Jozsef said from his door. Little-boy sullenness in his voice. “I wanted to play a computer game, Tonio, but I didn’t know the access code.”

  Sophie Payne had pushed herself, impossibly, to her feet. Her sunken eyes were crazed with fever.

  Tonio focused drunkenly on the woman. “What are you doing out of your cell?”

  “I wanted to play, too,” she said.

  Tonio swore viciously under his breath and lifted the laptop’s lid. Before he wheeled to confront them, Michael’s gun crashed down on his skull.

  And at that moment, they all heard the sound of the garage door opening.

  Mlan Krucevic was back.

  THREE

  Budapest, 2:15 A.M.

  MIRJANA TARCIC WAS PARKED in an alley near Béla Horváth’s house, about a hundred feet beyond his small backyard. Vaclav Slivik had never noticed her, a lapse in his tradecraft and judgment; but Mlan had given the assassin too little time to reconnoiter. Mirjana’s car was old and indeterminate of color, it was pulled up in the lee of a battered garage, and a tree trunk blocked the line of sight from Béla’s kitchen door. A better man than Vaclav would have missed it.

  Mirjana had spent most of the day in the emergency room of a Budapest hospital, waiting to be treated for bruises and cracked ribs. She had never gone home. One call to her answering machine had convinced her that home was a mistake.

  Mlan and his men had left Béla’s house hours ago. If she did not move soon, someone would come back.

  She had hoped against hope that it would be Béla himself who returned—whistling cheerfully as he walked up the drive, letting himself in through the front door, putting the teakettle on the stove in the wee hours of morning. That was foolishness, of course.

  Her cold hand sought the door handle and eased it open.

  The rains had brought down a mass of deadwood from the trees. The crunch of twigs beneath her feet was remorseless as death. She could not allow herself to breathe. She crept up to the back door wondering why his neighbors said nothing, why lights did not go on and alarms sound—and yet, they had suffered the noise of breaking glass without reaction. They were Hungarians. They had grown up under the Party system; black cars in the night had always taken people away. The wisest course was simply to go on sleeping.

  Her fingers found the latch. Inside, darkness.

  She stepped forward, toward a patch of moonlight bright as halogen on the gray linoleum, and saw a tumbled mass of human hair. The sight stopped her in her tracks.

  Not hair. Wet strands of a mop, fallen from the open broom closet. With a ragged breath, she reached for it and propped it inside. What had they wanted with this, in the middle of the night? Or had the broom closet door, poorly latched, fallen open under the mop’s weight?

  She hesitated, eyes adjusting now to the darkness, and scanned the narrow space. There was the usual broom, a dustpan neatly stacked beside a pail, bottles of cleaning stuff and a carryall filled with clean rags. She knelt and groped along the floor, dreading mice. And touched the square shape of the knapsack.

  She had seen him pedaling to work so many times, the knapsack a memory of those university days in Leipzig when they’d all managed to be happy. Béla had hidden it here in his last moments, and Mlan in his viciousness had not understood.

  Mirjana clutched the backpack to her chest and ran— heedless of the neighbors, of the branches cracking underfoot—for her life.

  FOUR

  Budapest, 7:30 A.M.

  I HAVE A THEORY, Tom Shephard said as the taxi pulled away from the entrance to the Hilton, “that a city’s soul is something you can feel. It walks the streets, asks you for change on a deserted corner, tells you what song it has to sing. You know what I mean?”

  Caroline glanced at him wordlessly. So Tom was a morning person. He had found something to love in this sordid new day, the air rank with burning and the looters asleep in the streets. After Eric had left her, she’d lain awake for hours.

  It was impossible not to consider every one of his words, every choice she had made; impossible not to see that she had fucked up abominably She had drawn Eric straight into her trap, and for emotional reasons, she had let him go. It was unforgivable. Unprofessional. It was exactly the kind of example a male case officer would use in an argument against women in Intelligence. Caroline showered blue language on her own head while Tom Shephard chatted genially at her side—Shephard, who had no idea that she had held the Vice President’s kidnappers in the palm of her hand and simply waved good-bye. Eric would never contact her again. And Sophie Payne’s life was at risk—

  “You okay?” Shephard asked.

  “I didn’t sleep well,” Caroline said brusquely. She felt bruised and overly sensitive, as though she suffered from sunburn.

  “Take Paris,” he went on. “Paris is a wealthy woman with a checkered past. She danced at the Folies Bergères in her youth, then married a besotted comte”

  “The very opposite of Washington,” Caroline managed.

  “Washington has the fussy correctness of a bureaucrat’s briefcase.”

  “And a tropical-weight suit,” she added, “permanently creased.”

  “Istanbul—Istanbul is a stalled caravan, hardening in the sun.”

  “St. Petersburg has diamonds in her hair and a gun at her back.”

  “So what’s Buda’s story?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “It’s part of your territory.”

  “But you’ve lived here.” His look was almost accusing. Intent, invasive, as disturbing as it had been in the plane the previous night. Her pulse quickened. What is he looking for?

  “I just visit here,” he persisted. “I want to hear your version of the truth.”

  No, you don’t, she thought. My version is a lie. The taxi had crossed the Chain Bridge and was now in Pest. Here, rioters had spared not a single shop window; shards of glass were flung across the sidewalk like hail. A lavender silk slip trailed across an overturned park bench; more clothes had snagged on trash cans and street signs as the whirlwind of looters had swept through them. Garbage from the dented cans sprawled across the roadbed. A forlorn dog rooted in a sodden cardboard box. Nearby, the sidewalk was stained with what looked like battery acid. Or blood.

  The taxi driver grunted and slowed his car to maneuver around an overturned van. Its engine block was still burning. They were the only people moving on the streets—except for a contingent of black-shirted guards. All stared at the taxi suspiciously as it creaked past. Caroline refused to make eye contact. And prayed that she and Shephard would be allowed to proceed.

  “Budapest,” she told him, “is a middle-aged man in a shabby coat, nursing an espresso at an outdoor café. It is very cold, and the smell of dog urine from the wet pavement mingles with the coffee and the sharp scent of pickled beets from somewhere down the street.”

  “He’s wearing wire-rimmed spectacles,” Shephard offered, “and writing in a notebook with a torn cover. His wife left him years ago, but he’s haunted by the memory of her laugh.”

  Caroline turned to look at him. “Is he?” she asked. “Better laughter than tears, Tom.”

  The hazel eyes did not waver. “What are you haunted by, Caroline?”

  It was all there before her suddenly,
the concourse in Frankfurt and the man turning away.

  “The memory of silence,” she replied. And did not speak again until they had reached Szabadsag Ter.

  The protesters had abandoned the U.S. embassy. No megaphoned speeches or hurled rocks greeted Shephard and Caroline as they approached. There was a checkpoint, however, backed by the ominous clatter of tanks, so they dismissed the taxi and covered the last thirty yards on foot, their diplomatic passports held high. After a grim few moments of consideration, the guards waved them through.

  The stretch of turf that ran between Magyar Television and the National Bank, a modernist cube of glass and steel, was churned to mud and studded with green shards of what had once been soda bottles. The burned trash cans were smoldering now, and stank of seared plastic; a bird, brown as the Danube in winter, pecked disconsolately among the torn seat cushions of a torched car. But the impulse toward civilization had begun to reassert itself; red tape with harsh Hungarian exclamations already cordoned off the worst areas.

  Vic Marinelli met them at the embassy door.

  “I’m glad you’re early,” the Budapest station chief said without preamble. “Our meeting’s off.”

  “Because of the riots?” Caroline asked.

  He shook his head. “We’ll discuss it upstairs. Let’s get you through security. Morning, Corporal. I’d like to take these people up.”

  The marine guard studied their diplomatic passports, then gave them embassy passes they clipped to their clothing. Vic hovered impatiently. He looked, she thought, like a Medici prince—black eyes heavily lidded, full lips set in a permanent curl. She glanced at his hands: the long, tapering fingers of a philosopher-priest.

  “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.

  SZENTENDRE 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.