The Cutout

by Francine Mathews

  The manager’s plum-brown eyes crinkled at the corners. He waggled a finger at her. “You’re three days past the date of your reservation. We’d almost despaired of you. We even went so far as to talk of calling New York.”

  “I’m sorry. I was trapped in Vietnam. A flood.”

  “I had no idea there was a problem. Typhoon?”

  “Yes,” she said abruptly. “You still have my room?”

  “Of course. For you —”

  He waved vaguely in the air as though to dispel doubt, or perhaps the persistent odor of damp and decay that clung to her clothing. “I shall escort you to the Garden Wing myself.”

  He came from behind the counter, reached delicately for her backpack, and hoisted it waist-high like a fish unaccountably snagged on his line. Stefani did not protest. The strict tension holding her upright had begun to dissolve in the jasmine-scented air, the hushed quiet of deep carpets. She followed Rewadee without a backward glance.

  The powerfully built man at the writing desk folded his newspaper carefully as he watched them go.

  The rain had started during her eighth day in Vietnam, after she left the Mekong Delta behind and headed north along the coast. Before Saigon there had been Vientiane, the backcountry of Laos, and the old trade routes that once ran between Burma and Angkor Wat and were slowly being reclaimed for capitalism from the guerillas and the drug lords. It had been seven weeks exactly since her last stop in Bangkok, seven weeks of monsoon, not the best time of year to travel. Vietnam and Laos have no national weather services. Predictions are made on the basis of hope, not science. Stefani traveled in ignorance, as people have traveled for millennia; and she learned to judge the feel of the air against her cheek, the color of clouds in the banded sky, and to guess the degree of wetness coming. The rainy season varied from place to place and she was alternately sweating under a humid sun or pounded by cloudburst.

  She was too travel-worn to worry when the rain fell in torrents just south of Hoi An. She stared out the car window at the endless fields of rice, rainwater lapping the dikes where the local peasants buried their dead, the stone monuments too solid and square among the feathery tips of green. Only one highway ran along the coast of Vietnam, a winding strip of macadam that uncoiled as innocently as a snare through the sudden peaks and dipping plains of the Truong Son Range. The South China Sea was creeping over the white strip of beach and encroaching upon the road; seawater licked at the hubcaps of her hired Mercedes. The car hood thrust through the small fry of pedal bikes and motor scooters like a blunt-nosed shark; enraged cyclists slammed their fists against the windows as she passed.

  They pushed on from Da Nang, Stefani and her Vietnamese driver, through the water that flooded the coast road until it fanned from their fenders like a ceremonial fountain and the green tips of the rice paddies were entirely submerged. By the time they struggled over the Hai Van pass and descended into Hue, the ancient Vietnamese capital, it was pitch dark and the driver was swearing.

  The Morin Hotel had a sluggish current streaming before the reception desk, the Century’s entire ground floor was under water; and while they stood on the soggy carpet, watching the rain drip from the ceiling tiles and gush down the banisters of the grand staircase, the first refugees arrived by boat.

  After that, Stefani abandoned the banks of the Perfume River and sought out the private home of a man she knew, a surgeon in the hospital in Hue, who lived on higher ground. Though it was nearly midnight, Pho was standing outside his house as they approached, his wife and four children busy on the flat roof of the single-story dwelling. They had managed to rig a tarpaulin (old U.S. Army combat green), and most of their belongings were already piled under it. Stefani got out of the car and helped haul a basket of trussed chickens up to the roof.

  Her driver dropped her pack on a plastic deck chair and wallowed down the hill in his flooded Mercedes, never to be heard from again.

  “You will eat rice with us?” Pho asked. His English was halting but thorough; at thirteen, he’d carried a gun for the South Vietnamese Army.

  “I would be honored,” Stefani replied.

  Pho’s wife boiled rainwater over a kerosene burner, and rice is what they ate for the next five days—rice and a few eggs produced by the querulous chickens, while the Perfume River engulfed the Imperial City. They were cut off on a shallow island without a boat, and the river rising.

  That first night no one slept out of fear that even the roof would not be high enough. Pho’s wife kept her youngest child strapped tightly against the wet skin of her breast and rocked without ceasing as she hunkered under the tarp. Stefani paced off the roofline and found that the world had dwindled to eighty square feet. By day, they saw the houses of less fortunate lowlanders sweep by on the current. Boxes, rubbish, a flotilla of dead cats. Pho’s neighbors called shrilly from other rooftops, traded rumors and news and what food they had. The children squabbled and fished ineffectually for the cats. Stefani tried to make a cellular phone call and found her battery was dead. By late afternoon, boats crowded with the homeless were poling through the flooded trees.

  She scanned the skies for helicopters and saw nothing but layers of cloud. The sound of rain pattering on the tin roof under her was slowly driving her mad. She wanted to stuff rags in her ears, to scream words above the din; she fought the impulse to dive like a rat over the side of the sinking house. No helicopters appeared. The surging current was only eighteen inches below the roofline. The rain went on.

  A palm tree in Pho’s front yard served as her high-water marker. When the flood began, two feet of trunk were submerged. At 2:53 A.M. on the third day, at the height of the typhoon, she shone a fitful flashlight on the swaying palm and guessed that eight more feet had vanished. Thirty-one hours later, when the river was within five inches of Pho’s roof, the rain turned to drizzle and the water began to recede from the hilltop. Stefani thought of arks and of doves and of eating something other than rice boiled in rainwater. When the house’s ground floor appeared thirteen hours later, she helped Pho sweep the stinking mud and a few drowned chickens from his house while his wife burned incense to the river god.

  That afternoon, Pho waded down to the open-air market and bought vegetables and more kerosene. Stefani went with him, sloshing through water that surged to her thighs and trying not to think of snakes. She watched shoe salesmen hose the mud out of ladies’ pumps and men’s sneakers, she watched hawkers sell plastic ponchos and tourists film the wreckage with Baggies strapped over their video lenses. The bodies of the drowned were beginning to surface. Children sold chewing gum and the more enterprising cycle drivers charged journalists ten bucks apiece to view the corpses.

  Later, she pressed two hundred and six dollars—all the hard currency she had—into Pho’s palm and pulled her backpack onto her shoulders.

  She fought her way onto a public bus and traveled south at a snail’s pace, back to Da Nang, the only airport within reach that possessed a jet-length runway and a connecting flight to Bangkok. The trip usually took three hours; she stifled in the bus for ten. The narrow highway was still drowned under a yard of water. To the right she spied the railway line, impassable now, whole sections of track torn off and dangling. There were rumors of passengers stranded for days in the packed train cars.

  “Not your usual room,” Mr. Rewadee said now as he thrust a key into the Oriental’s bedroom door, “but exactly like it in every particular. I’ve placed a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and several of tonic at the bar, along with some limes.”

  The suite was four rooms on two levels: a breakfast area near the pale green sofa, the bedroom and teak-lined bath up a short flight of stairs. Kumquats flushed orange in a porcelain bowl. She knew, now, that seven people could survive for days in a space of eighty feet square. Maybe she should invite all of Bangkok in for a party.

  “Mr. Krane has called several times,” Rewadee observed delicately. “I would be happy to inform New York that you have arrived—”

  “I
left two suitcases with the bellman a month ago.”

  Mr. Rewadee bowed.

  “I’d like them brought up right away. Also a cheeseburger and a beer. And could you book me a massage for this afternoon?”

  One entire wall of the room was glass. Stefani pulled wide the raw silk curtains, saw the long-tailed boats churning across the River of Kings—and leaned her forehead against the window. Just what she needed. A view of the water.

  “Welcome back to the Oriental, Ms. Fogg.” Her personal butler held out a silver tray with a glass of orange juice and a copy of the New York Times.

  Stefani Fogg was thirty-nine years old. She had a slight frame that encouraged most people to think she was frail. She was a pretty woman with the face of a pixie: heart-shaped, smiling, a hint of hilarity and high living in the sharp cheekbones. Like her body, it was a face calculated to deceive. Under the fringe of jet-black curls her brown eyes were assessing and shrewd.

  “Wharton School,” Charlie Krane had murmured over lunch in his corporate headquarters seven months before; “and prior to that, Stanford. I can see you in California, Stef-—but Philadelphia? Come on.” He consulted no résumé; it was his habit to remember everything. The most secure intelligence network in the world, Charlie Krane liked to say, was the human brain—provided it was properly handled. “Iconoclast. You did the Lauder Program instead of a Harvard M.B.A. I like that about you; you never quite run to form. You speak German, I understand? Though you’re said to prefer Italian.”

  She shrugged. “Better wine.”

  “Pity you didn’t work up some Russian. Or Chinese.”

  “But then I wouldn’t be just another pretty face, Charlie.”

  “Balls,” he’d retorted sharply. “You don’t run a fund for a major investment house—and get a seventy-eight percent return over five years—with just another pretty face.”

  He peered at her forbiddingly through his tortoise-shell glasses.

  “I want you for Krane’s, Stefani, and I’m willing to bet I’ve an offer you won’t refuse.”

  “That’s your job, isn’t it?—Predicting the level of risk?”

  She had tilted her pixie face and thrown him that disarming smile; he’d stared her down. Charlie had done his homework, of course; he knew the exact extent of Stefani’s personal holdings. Something under eleven million dollars in various funds; an eight-room co-op on Central Park; a summer place in Edgartown; a ski condo in Deer Valley. He would know that mere money wasn’t enough to scuttle her present job. She’d had money for years and was bored with it.

  The walls of the small dining room were lined with cobalt blue velvet. Only one table—theirs—was placed in the center of the maple floor. The view from the fifty-fourth story was blocked by sheer silk curtains in a color that shifted under the eye like seawater; a screen, no doubt, for Charlie’s varied electronics.

  He had given her sushi, tempura prepared at the table, a fan of fresh vegetables, and a glass of Screaming Eagle. When she had refused a passion-fruit flan, the head of the firm leaned across the table and ticked off his points in a voice that sounded pure BBC, though it was probably born in Brixton.

  “Point the First: Stefani Fogg when she’s at home. Likes to describe herself as bright but shallow. Raised comfortably in Larchmont, Princeton, Menlo Park. Father a chemical researcher and large-animal veterinarian. Mother rather determinedly hip. She’s a clever girl, our Stef, but gun-shy where commitment is concerned. No lover, no child, not so much as a small white dog for messing the carpet with. Appears to choose men by their shirt size rather than their IQs—the odd fitness instructor or bartender, a hapless musician. In the past seven years, no relationship longer than four months.

  “Frequently described by the admiring epithet of bitch. Roughly translated: she has committed all the sins available to a woman in a man’s world. Restless, impatient, ruthless, and ambitious. Sole weakness a reckless streak you could drive a semi through. Two hundred years ago, she’d have been burned at the stake as a heretic and a witch. The girl has intelligence, of course, and courage; but if she has a soul, nobody’s saying. I do not,” he added sternly, “consider charm to be evidence of a soul.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “Point the Second: Stefani Fogg rumored to have turned down the chairmanship of FundMarket International last year, when it was offered her on a plate. Pundits confused.

  “Point the Third: Stefani Fogg supposedly in play for CFO of at least three major multinationals, none of which succeeded in bagging her. Pundits agog.

  “Point the Fourth: Galileo Emerging Tech —the fund Stefani Fogg manages at FundMarket—has lost nearly sixty-seven percent of its high-market value over the past three weeks. Rumors flying within FundMarket and without: Fogg is slipping, Fogg is asleep at the wheel, Fogg may be out on her arse next Tuesday. Pundits immensely gratified.”

  He sat back in his seat and stared at her with satisfaction. “Missed anything?”

  “Just my soul. I keep it beneath the floor of a warehouse off Canal Street.” She toyed with the Screaming Eagle. “About Galileo —The tech market’s volatile, Charlie. You want big returns, you run major risk. Sometimes that means short-term loss.”

  “And you’ve generally defied the odds, haven’t you? So what’s gone wrong this month?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I have a theory, old thing. I won’t bother to ask whether you’d like to hear it.”

  “Well, you did give me lunch. I can spare you a few more minutes.”

  “Stefani Fogg is bored off her nut and desperate for fun,” he suggested. “Galileo is sinking because she no longer gives a diddly I could offer the girl a spot of larceny or a fast plane to a desert island, and she’d snatch them both out of my moist little palm. Any sort of diversion would do, provided it were dangerous enough. She’s toyed with electronic fraud, with faking her own death, with ripping off Tiffany’s in a cat suit at midnight—but the payoff is never quite worth the risk. Our Stef has her reservations. She knows that crime, however enchanting, however séduisante, can rather get one’s hair mussed. Crime carries with it a measure of annoyance. There’s the enforcement chappies, of course; there are turf battles between kingpins she doesn’t even know, potentates she could easily offend. There’s the possibility of maiming or a sordid public death. Our Stef refuses to pay the earth for a casual fling. She’s looking for bigger game. Something with staying power. A challenge to match her peculiar wits. Am I right, dear heart? Have I hit the target bang-on?”

  She went very still, watching him. He was a mild-looking man in his late forties: slim, loosely tailored in medium gray wool, his fair hair clipped short over the temples and rakishly long at the brow. The tortoise-shell glasses partially concealed intense, caramel-colored eyes. Altogether a sleek kind of cat, his tail practically twitching as he surveyed her. He had done his homework.

  “So you have the antidote to boredom, Charlie. What could you possibly offer that I need or want?”

  “Fun, intrigue, and high jinks on six continents,” he replied promptly. “A floating bank account accessible at all times for expenses that would never be questioned. Counsel from the main office whenever you want it, but no handcuffs or second-guesses or attempts to drive your car from the rear. An unwritten brief. A handful of clients. Stimulation. A direct line to my desk, night or day. Gut decisions. Unlimited spa time in exotic places. Power.”

  “To do what, exactly?”

  “Beat crooks at their own game. Much more exciting than joining them, I always think. You could spy and seduce and manipulate empires—all in the name of defending commerce. With your talent and brains, Stef, you could write your dossier.”

  “But why me, Charlie? Why the bitch with the lousy returns?”

  “Because they’ll never see you coming, darling,” he answered softly. “You’re a bloody great gold mine. Smart and chic and too damn bored with your own wealth to be corruptible. You’ll have your teeth sunk into their nec
ks before they even catch your scent.” Charlie’s tawny eyes flicked across her face with brutal candor. “And there’s the added advantage that I can deny you, ducks. As far as the world of High Finance is concerned, we’ve never even traded so much as an air kiss. I’m not offering you a title and a desk with a plastic nameplate. I don’t want you in New York. I want you bumming around the world on extended holiday.”

  “Anonymity and carte blanche,” she mused. “A high-wire act without a safety net. If I fail, I fail alone.”

  “Of course. Where would the challenge be, otherwise?”

  A silence fell between them.

  “Don’t refuse me before you’ve had ages to think,” Charlie suggested soothingly. “It wouldn’t be the first time a woman’s done that, I grant you—but for Stefani Fogg, I’m willing to wait.”

  “Until Galileo craters?”

  What had he said? Charm was no evidence of a soul?

  He smiled, and pressed a small button under the table. A waiter appeared within seconds, on soundless feet.

  “You’ve had the glamorous turn, old thing.” Charlie’s voice was like a croon. “You’ve had the usual stiffs in the Wall Street clubs with their fast cars and limp members. Now you want to run with the wolves. Don’t you? Confess it.”

  Cutout definition from The Encyclopedia of Espionage

  THE CUTOUT

  A Bantam Book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2001 by Francine Mathews.

  Maps by Jeffrey L. Ward.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00–31651.

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