The Cutout cc-1

by Francine Mathews

  “Fucking broad daylight.” Otto had rolled up the window and was staring back over his shoulder, intent upon a possible tail. “What the fucks he thinking, huh? That we'll fucking die for him? Just one of those Joes saw our plates — ”

  “They didn't see the plates,” Michael said.

  “What are you saying? That Mian made a mistake? That he's losing it? I wouldn't let him hear that.”

  “What do you know, you useless piece of meat? You got shit for brains. Peas for balls. Next time, I throw you out the window.”

  On the pavement in front of the American embassy, nothing exploded. One of the marines got to his feet and studied the package. The schnauzer broke free of its screaming mistress and sank its teeth into the Marine's ankle.

  “You did well.”

  Stoop-shouldered, with a bald spot as decisive as a Franciscan's on the crown of his head, Bela Horvath was peering into a microscope ocular at a sample of vaccine No. 413 — Mian Krucevic's answer to the mumps epidemic. No one else was in the laboratory. Except for the dark-haired woman with the white scarf wrapped like a bandage around her neck. “Can you tell anything?” Mirjana Tarcic asked him.

  “For that, we need time. Trials with mice. DNA scans. Assessment and analysis. But this is a start. The best we could possibly have.”

  Bela took off his glasses, leaned toward her as she sat on the lab stool in a pool of light from a Tensor lamp, and kissed her cheek.

  “You're very brave, you know.”

  She flinched as though the praise stung her.

  “And then? When you have your analysis? What will you do with it?”

  “Tell Michael. He's the one who wants to know.”

  She shook her head.

  “It's not enough. We have to tell the world.”

  “Tell them what?” Horvath smiled at her indulgently. “That the latest Yugoslav terrorist is quite possibly insane? The world will not be surprised.”

  “I did not go to Berlin for Michael,” Mirjana said tautly.

  “No. And I do not flatter myself that you went for me. Why exactly did you go, Mirjana?”

  Wordlessly, she reached her hands to her throat and unwound the scarf. It was as much a part of this woman as her sharp nose, her writhing dark hair. Beta had not seen her throat in at least five years.

  The final length of silk trailed away. Her hand dropped to her side, clenched.

  He drew a deep breath, steadied himself, and reached trembling fingers to her cheek. She reared back, as though he might strike her.

  “Mirjana,” he whispered in horror. “Who did this to you?”

  The wound had healed long ago. But the vicious edge, torn and rewoven like the bride of Frankenstein, stared out accusingly from the pale expanse of her neck.

  She had been savaged. It was as though a wild animal had gnawed at her flesh, and what remained was carrion for birds.

  “Mian?” he asked.

  She began to wind the scarf once more around her throat.

  “You remember the Krajina?”

  The Krajina. A blood bath in Bosnia, Serb killing Croat, Croat killing Serb.

  Thousands died.

  “We had gone there, Zoran and I, with the boy.”

  “Zoran?”

  “My brother. Mian had been missing for weeks. We believed he was dead.” Her dark eyes were flat and unreadable, a look Beta knew of old. “Sarajevo was in ruins, our building had been hit. Zoran was mad to join the Serb forces — he was twenty-three, Bela, filled with rage and hatred. I went with him to the Krajina because I had nowhere else to go. Our parents were dead. There was the boy. I thought we might find protection.”

  Protection.

  “They came in the night, the Croat killers. They tore us from our beds and set fire to the houses, they shot some where they lay. They took the men in a group to the edge of town, and there they butchered them. And I — I hid my Jozsef in a cellar with some women and their babies; he was only seven, Bela, but they would have killed him — and I went after Zoran and the Croats.”

  She pointed to her neck.

  “This is how they killed my brother, Bela. With a chain saw.”

  “Mian?” Bela whispered.

  “He kept them from killing me,” she replied, “when they had started. But he did not stop them from raping me four, ten, sixteen times. And he did not save my brother. I watched Zoran die. He screamed, Bela, all the hatred that was in him — useless. It did not save him. But perhaps it kept him from being afraid.

  “You call me brave. But you are a fool, Bela. I am afraid every day and night of my life. Afraid of him.”

  “I know. That is why I call you brave. Fear does not stop you. You take the plane to Berlin — ”

  “He wanted Jozsef, you see,” she went on, as though he had not spoken. “Mian thought I had left the boy with friends in Sarajevo. He thought the pain and fear would make me tell him, that I would buy my life with my Jozsef's blood. But I told him nothing. He had no choice but to let me live. If I died, he would never find his son again.”

  “And he did,” Bela said.

  “Four years later, in Belgrade. By that time, The Hague had branded Mian a criminal. No one thought he would show his face in Serb territory again. But it was a mistake to think we were safe. Mian came and stole my boy in the night.”

  Bela reached over and snapped off the Tensor lamp.

  “You went to Berlin for Jozsef.”

  She shook her head.

  “I will never see Jozsef again. I went to Berlin for revenge.”

  Sophie could feel Michael's presence beyond the bathroom door. He stood guard there, ostensibly to keep her within, and yet she felt as though he really kept Krucevic out. This was absurd, of course; in her circumstances, it was a piece of self-delusion so pitiful it was dangerous. It set up a false sympathy. Michael had done nothing to prevent her infection with Anthrax 3A. He had done nothing, if it came to that, to prevent her kidnapping in the first place. So what was his game? Why was he a member of 30 April at all? And what did he truly mean by those muttered words, “/ will not let you die at this man's hands”!

  She almost wished he had said nothing. He had created the illusion of hope, and she needed to fight hope as much as despair. In her mind she had erected a wall of vigilance, one that permitted no hint of the fate that awaited her to penetrate inside. The wall assumed her end would be painful and that her only choice was to meet it with dignity. She burned, nonetheless, with questions.

  “What do you do all day?” she asked Jozsef. “When you're not standing vigil over the operation, I mean?”

  “Sometimes I read books. Sometimes he lets me watch the television. It depends.”

  What had Peter done at twelve? He skateboarded. He rode his bike. He spent a lot of time outdoors on baseball and soccer fields. He played Nintendo and computer games and he bragged to his friends and he never, never spent an entire day hunched in the corner of a dank bathroom in a stranger's house.

  “Do you ever play games on a computer?”

  His head came up at that.

  “You saw it? Tonio's computer?”

  “No. Does he have one?”

  Jozsef nodded.

  “Tonio is a genius.”

  “I suppose he told you that himself.”

  “My father says it. It is why he allows Tonio near him, although Tonio sings American music and is not to be trusted when the liquor is in him. When Tonio is drunk, he sings louder, and my father orders Otto to beat him. But Papa needs Tonio for his genius.”

  “Really,” Sophie said, growing more interested. “And what does Tonio do for your father?”

  “He can find his way into any computer system anywhere in the world.” Jozsef was proud. “He once found his way into most of the banks in Switzerland, and into the Italian treasury, but for that he went to prison.”

  “Not much of a genius, then, if he got caught.”

  “Tonio hated prison so much that he tried to kill himself with a razor. He
swears he will not go back again. It is why he fights for my father. To get back at all of them.”

  “The Swiss banks?”

  “And the West. The West is very evil.”

  “I thought the West was your father's only hope. He hates the East, right?”

  Jozsef frowned.

  “It is complicated, I think. Papa hates the East, certainly, because all evil comes from the East; but the West is evil, too. It must be … What is the word? Washed? ... before it is good again.”

  “Cleansed,” Sophie murmured, and thought of the mass graves in Bosnia and Kosovo.

  “Cleansed.” Jozsef tested the word on his tongue.

  “And so Tonio will cleanse the West with his computer. What bank will he break into next?”

  But this, it seemed, was far too direct a question. The boy retreated into himself, once more the guardian of the operation, his fingers worrying the fur of his good-luck charm.

  “Who gave you the rabbit's foot?” Sophie asked.

  A swift look, pregnant with apprehension.

  “Its never out of your hands.”

  “I found it.”

  “That's probably what you tell your father. It's not the truth.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, then leaned toward her.

  “My mother gave it to me. For luck during the war, when she was afraid that a sniper's bullet would take me.”

  “My son has a good-luck charm,” Sophie lied. “Not a rabbit's foot, but a ring from our naval academy. His father gave it to him before he died. Peter wears it on a chain around his neck, and it never leaves him.”

  “His father was a naval person?”

  “Curt was a jet pilot a long time ago. In the American navy.”

  “Ah.” Jozsef's eyes darkened. Too late, Sophie remembered what American jets had done to Belgrade.

  “The ring. It has brought your son good luck?”

  Peter's face so much a blend of Curt's and her own that she could no longer see where one began and the other left off flashed briefly before her eyes, then was gone. She felt a pain so sharp she could not speak for several seconds, and then said, “Yes. I think it has brought him luck. Except for his father's death, of course.”

  “His father was shot?”

  A commonplace question for a terrorist's son.

  “He died of cancer.”

  “Then perhaps your son forgot to wear his ring that day” Jozsef said with unconscious cruelty. “I have never lost my rabbit's foot, and until I do, I shall be safe. I know that with certainty, so help me God.”

  “Is that why you keep it secret? So that the luck won't fade?”

  He hesitated and again looked over his shoulder. She knew then that the reason was Mian Krucevic.

  “It is all that I have left of my mother,” the boy whispered. “If my father knew where it came from, he would take it away. And what would happen to Mama then?”

  “You have to keep her safe, too,” Sophie said with sudden comprehension.

  There was a knock on the door and it opened.

  “Jozsef,” Michael said. “You're wanted.”

  The boy's hand clenched on the scrap of dirty white fur. Then, looking at Sophie, he held his finger to his lips in the age — old gesture for silence. She lifted her finger in return.

  Ten

  Berlin, 5:07 p.m.

  Caroline would have loved to raise a glass with Ie tout Berlin herself. Or a bowl of steaming lentil soup at Café Adler, the small bar that still sat opposite what had once been Checkpoint Charlie. Years earlier John Le Carre, a mere David Cornwell employed by the British secret service, had watched the Cold War begin from one of the café's ringside seats. Checkpoint Charlie had been replaced now by something the Germans called an office park; but the Adler was unchanged, smoky with the romance of mittel Europa. It was time, she thought, to retreat into yellow lamplight and scattered tables, to nurse her jet lag with tea and silence. And consider her next move.

  Wally refused to let Caroline wander off, however, and he had no intention of returning her to the Hyatt unfed. They drove through the barricaded streets in his brand — new Volvo, zigzagging around the yawning pits of construction that bisected every boulevard. The early darkness of Berlin's autumn had fallen like a theater scrim over the city; rain lashed against the windshield. Caroline's jet lag was so profound she had begun to shake.

  “God, it's good to see you, Mad Dog,” Wally said. “What's it been — two years?”

  “More. How did you like Budapest?”

  “Nice town. But not my best work. It's a thankless job to replace Eric Carmichael. You can't replace him. You just show up and exit stage left as soon as possible.”

  He was trying to make her feel good. The truth was, few people in the Agency could recruit or handle agents as effectively as Wally. He was everybody's hometown buddy the boy who'd never had a date to the prom, the one who held your hand late at night in a thousand seedy bars. With his worn wool suits and his graying goatee, Wally was genuine, Wally was sympathetic, Wally was a stand-up kind of guy; and before you knew it, Wally had slipped you some money and a contract and you were spilling your guts to the CIA.

  “So I suppose they gave you Berlin as a way of easing you down gently, right? You're one step away from a Bronze Intelligence Star and a comfortable retirement in upstate New York.”

  He grimaced at the windshield.

  “I look plausible and I can bullshit up the wa zoo Carrie, but I'm not Eric. What he wouldn't do with this mess, huh? Wouldn't he be in his element right now? A rescue plan for the Vice President of the United States. The ultimate cowboy operation. Of course, if Eric had been around, the hit would've never happened. He'd have rolled up 30 April long ago.”

  “Except that they rolled him up first,” Caroline said. And added Wally to the list of people Eric had betrayed.

  He glanced at her.

  “You any closer to pinning these guys for MedAir 901?”

  “No. And that investigation is now on the back burner. Sophie Payne has to take precedence.”

  “We'll get 'em,” Wally said positively. “We always do. Even if it takes ten years.”

  Caroline had breathed, drunk, and slept MedAir 901 for the past thirty months.

  Now the mere mention of the plane made her skin crawl. If the investigation continued if Cuddy Wilmot delved deeper into the truth, like a child picking at a scab what exactly would they learn? That Eric had deliberately killed two hundred and fifty-eight people in order to fake his own death? That as far back as the Frankfurt airport a farewell kiss in a crowded concourse she had not the slightest idea who her husband really was?

  “There's something I have to ask you, Wally.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Eric's handling of the 30 April account. In Budapest. Before he died. You must have walked into a nightmare when you took over.”

  “How so?” Wally swerved to avoid a jaywalker suddenly illuminated in the headlights, and cursed into the darkness. “From what I remember, Eric was pretty close to penetrating the organization. He had a recruit in Krucevic's inner circle. Or so I thought.”

  “In Budapest?”

  Wally wasn't trying to stonewall her. He was simply searching his memory for operational matters that belonged to another posting he'd left six months ago.

  Then his eyelids flickered and he down shifted for a turn.

  “That'd be DBTOXIN,” he said.

  Caroline's breath nearly caught in her throat. A code name to attach to her untested source, a piece of the denied DO file. Wally was trusting her with operational Intelligence. She had better take it in stride.

  “DBTOXIN?”

  “The last fish Eric reeled in. A biologist in Buda. Trained with Krucevic at the university in Leipzig during the old Cold War days. They're pals from way back.”

  “Think they're pals still?”

  Wally considered.

  “Maybe I should get on the horn to Buda and set up some tasking. See whether TOXI
N knows where Krucevic is headed.”

  “I sure as hell would.”

  “Wonder if the guys still on the payroll.”

  “So he wasn't blown when Eric died?”

  “TOXIN? No way.” Wally glanced at her. “Is that what you've been thinking? That Eric's last recruit betrayed him? And that's why Krucevic blew up his plane? Disaster's not that personal, Carrie, even in this business.”

  Time to change the subject.

  “Speaking of personal,” she said, “hows Brenda?”

  Brenda was Wally's wife. She was a California native, a vegetarian, and a massage therapist. He had met her during language training in Monterey. She was the last person anybody expected to fall in love with Wally, but the hometown — buddy routine had apparently worked. “Brenda left Berlin about a month ago, right after Voekl came to power. Her grandparents were Holocaust survivors, Caroline. She's not sticking around to see whether Fritz is sane.”

  “He's never been overtly anti-Semitic, Wally.”

  “No German politician can be and survive. Voekl says the right things. But the language is a sort of code, Caroline. Attack the outsider even if it's the Muslims this time and sooner or later, you'll catch up with the Jews.”

  Caroline winced.

  “Did she take your kids?”

  He nodded, gaze fixed on the wet asphalt rippling in the headlights.

  “The apartment's like a mausoleum.”

  Brenda was important to Wally, but his two boys were his reasons to live.

  “That must be tough,” Caroline said.

  He shrugged.

  “We call each other a lot. And my tour's up in eighteen months. Look, I'm starving. Why don't we grab something and head back to my place?”

  “Something” turned out to be wurst from a kosher deli in the Scheunenviertel, the old Jewish quarter of Berlin where Wally had an apartment in a converted nineteenth-century town house. They ate brown bread, dense and nutty, and soft German cheese with the wurst. Wally drank dark beer. They sat on a faded velvet sofa in his high-ceilinged living room and talked of inconsequential things people they knew and hadn't seen in months, recipes for a true Hungarian gulyas, Brenda's practice in the Maryland suburbs. And when the insistent edge of Caroline's hunger had been muted, she wiped her fingers on a paper napkin and sat back to enjoy Wally's wine.