The Cutout cc-1

by Francine Mathews

  Eric's voice murmured with the sound of tap water in her ear, relentless, caressing, the voice of conscience and nightmare. All that he had said looped endlessly in her mind, a refrain she could not banish. He stood behind her as she drew on her clothes; he lifted her hair from the nape of her neck. She moved now under the glare of his gaze — and wondered briefly who had set the trap for whom.

  He called me in the night. He knows where I am. Because Sharif already got to him? Because he saw my face on a newscaster's screen? Eric. That little girl.

  Jesus, Eric.

  Her fingers trembled as she applied her makeup; trembled with anger and longing.

  At this rate, she'd jump sky-high when Sharif tapped on her shoulder. She briefly considered carrying her snub-nosed Walther TPH in a thigh holster concealed by the swing coat, then rejected the idea. Palestinian bomb makers might consent to meet with the anxious cousin of an underworld acquaintance, but they would be certain to search her thoroughly first. Jane Hathaway spent her days banking in London; she was unlikely to carry a piece with her on holiday.

  The concierge at the front desk looked at her blankly as she passed. Caroline pushed jauntily through the revolving door, as though she had nothing more than shopping on her mind.

  She purchased the Herald Tribune at a sidewalk kiosk and scanned the headlines as she walked. Sophie Payne had not been found. The LJ-Bahn in Potsdamer Platz was tempting — she could read as she rode — but the distance was short and the morning air, the Berliner luft, a gift to the sleep-deprived. She strode east along Leipzigerstrasse and then north along Grunerstrasse, marveling at the new life springing up amid the careworn avenues of the Mitte district. And rising before her as she walked, more alien with every step, was the Communist television tower's steel needle, like a hypodermic piercing the sky. A hypodermic. Everything reminded her of Sophie Payne.

  Alexanderplatz, where Prussian and Russian troops had once drilled to defeat Napoleon; where the streetcar lines of the Bismarck era converged in raucous confusion; where prostitutes and lorry drivers and clerks convened in a hundred different bars, until the Allied bombs of 1943 leveled the square and, two years later, the Soviets marched in to “liberate” the city. It was a vast and chilly emptiness still, several football fields in size. Grunerstrasse plunged beneath it, to emerge on the other side as Neue Konigstrasse; there were very few approaches by car. He would have to walk up to her, or drive by to the northeast, on Karl-Marx-Allee. She took up a position at the television tower's base, facing the Allee, and proceeded to study her newspaper. It was hard on eight o'clock.

  Standing there in the middle of the drab morning, Caroline fought back a persistent sense of the ridiculous. IfMahmoud Sharif could even remember the name of Michael O'Shaughnessy from a telephone call made months before, he was unlikely to risk his neck because of it. Why drive out early in the morning for the sake of a woman he had never seen? She turned over the front section of the Herald Tribune (the same edition Mian Krucevic had placed under Sophie Payne's chin the previous day) and found a picture of herself, snapped in Pariser Platz by an enterprising news photographer. The Volksturm guard she had confronted was holding his truncheon high, and Caroline's mouth was open in a scream. She stared at the image, fascinated. She had never seen herself in newsprint before. Was it this, rather than the television footage, that had triggered Eric's phone call?

  At the thought of him, her mind winced and leapt away.

  A dirty white Trabant — a pitiful putt-putt the size of a golf cart — drove slowly past on Karl-Marx-Allee. Caroline's eyes flicked up, considered it, then looked down at her paper. It was for Sharif to broach the question.

  Eight-fourteen. More cars passed. She'd read the news that mattered, and was killing time with feature stories. The white Trabant again, traveling in the opposite direction. Only one person behind the wheel, too distant to be clearly seen.

  “I think that perhaps you are Ms. Jane Hathaway,” said a quiet voice at her shoulder.

  Caroline did not jump. She folded her newspaper deliberately and tucked it under her arm.

  He was a compact and neat person in a black leather jacket and tweed pants. Dark skin, eyes the color of espresso, black brows and mustache.

  “I am,” she said. “Are you Mahmoud Sharif?”

  “Please come with me,” he said by way of answer.

  When she hesitated, a second man materialized behind her. He placed a persuasive hand on her elbow.

  “Very well,” she said coolly, and went without a backward glance.

  They bundled her into a steel gray Mercedes, Caroline in the middle of the backseat with a man on either side. A third man drove. She felt a moment of panic, a wave of claustrophobia. She subdued it with effort. It would not do to betray a fit of nerves. She was merely a friend's cousin.

  The first man who had approached her drew a length of white cloth from his pocket.

  “It is not permitted to see where you are going. I must beg to cover your eyes.” If they were kidnapping her, Caroline thought, they would hardly have been so polite. They would have shoved a wad of cotton in her mouth and forced her head down to her knees if they hadn't stowed her in the trunk first.

  She removed her sunglasses and placed them in her purse. Then she inclined her beret toward her escort, praying that her wig was secure. The hands came up behind her head, a ceremonial gesture. And he covered her eyes.

  At first they drove at what seemed a normal pace, darting in and out of Berlin traffic with the occasional pause for a right or left turn. Then Caroline heard a few words flung back from the front seat, something brief and explosive in Arabic. The driver was swearing. Her companion's fingers tightened on her arm.

  “Who should be following, Jane Hathaway?”

  “Following me? No one. I know no one in Berlin.”

  The Mercedes lurched forward, picking up speed, and swerved violently to the left. Caroline slid against the man beside her, and he grunted.

  “There is a white Trabant behind us. My friend who is driving is certain it has been behind us some time. Who do you know with a white Trabant?”

  “No one. I'm a stranger here. But if it's a Trabant, it won't be behind you long. They've got no power.”

  “That is not the point,” the man said sternly. “We cannot take you to Sharif if we do not know who is following. You are with the police, perhaps?”

  “Of course not! I told you. I'm from London. I don't know anybody in Germany. Maybe it's one of your friends.”

  He did not reply. The car swerved again, accelerated, made a series of abrupt turns.

  Wally. Plausible, sympathetic, endearing Wally. Had he set her up with the story about Sharifat the Tacheles and then watched to see what she'd do?

  Or was it someone else from the station someone deputed by Dare Atwood, perhaps, to keep tabs on her?

  Dare knew what Jane Hathaway looked like.

  When you're under surveillance, Mad Dog, said Eric's voice in her mind, never, never let your tail know you see him. If you do, he'll suspect you're worth following. But Sharif's men had never learned Eric's lessons.

  Bore him to tears. Change your plans if necessary. Abort the meeting or the dead drop or the safe-house visit. And when you lose him, do it so casually he never sees it coming. Never with a high-speed car chase through a crowded city, where the cops might decide to get involved.

  As the Palestinians were doing now.

  But no cops were interested in a gray Mercedes careening through eastern Berlin.

  All the cops in the city, it seemed, were standing guard around the rubble of the Brandenburg Gate.

  Fingers fumbled at the cloth around her eyes.

  “You may get out now, Jane Hathaway.”

  He was already standing at the open car door, one hand politely extended. She placed her own within it and allowed him to help her out of the car. Arab courtesy, she thought. There would probably be a plate of dates and figs in the room beyond.

  What s
he found, however, was a space as deliberately innocuous as an Agency safe house. Whatever their problem with mobile surveillance, the Palestinians had absorbed some form of tradecraft.

  Three windows, blinds drawn. One couch, quite characterless, and two armchairs at correct angles beside it. A coffee table with an ashtray in the event that she smoked. Beyond this, a small cubicle that was probably a bathroom.

  No family photographs, no magazines with address labels, no books that might reveal a personal taste. No telephone. No television. She was certain she would find the windows and front door locked.

  She took off her coat and threw it over a chair.

  “Which of you is Sharif?”

  The tidy man in the leather jacket smiled slightly.

  “None of us, Jane Hathaway. You may call me Akbar.”

  The names of the other two were not for her keeping, it seemed.

  “How did you hear of this .. . Mahmoud Sharif?” Akbar asked her.

  She frowned, as though puzzled.

  “From my cousin Michael, of course. Michael O'Shaughnessy. He's done some favors for Sharif in the past.”

  “Sharif is beholden only to Allah,” he replied.

  “Then perhaps the obligation was my cousin's,” Caroline suggested graciously. “But Michael told me that if I ever needed to reach him, Mahmoud was the one man in Europe who would know where he was.”

  Akbar perched on the arm of the sofa and studied Caroline. She continued to stand, her back to the wall and her eyes on the door.

  “Why is this Michael so difficult to find?” he asked.

  “Aren't most of Mahmoud's friends?”

  “But no.” He spread his arms out wide to include the silent pair ranged behind him. “We are as you see. Present when you required us. Without even the demand of a proof or a demonstration of good faith”

  “Other than the little matter of a blindfold,” Caroline pointed out.

  His expression did not change.

  “Why do you wish to see Mahmoud?”

  “I told you. I need to find my cousin. His father has just died. There was no way to contact Michael, and I need to speak to him about the family.”

  “Perhaps a message could be passed.”

  “Perhaps. But I don't think that's for you to say, Akbar. Unless you really are Sharif.”

  Mirth flooded the dark eyes. It was gone before Caroline had a chance to interpret it.

  “And now I must beg to examine the contents of your purse, Jane Hathaway.”

  It was a large black leather shoulder bag in the shape of a backpack. It fairly screamed Knightsbridge. She handed it to him wordlessly and sank down onto the couch.

  He carried the purse to the bare table and shook out its contents. Caroline could have recited them in her sleep.

  The sunglasses, on top.

  A red leather wallet, with about one hundred and fifty-three marks in bills and small change, a Visa card, a Harrods credit card, a British driver's license, and a long-distance calling card.

  A picture of Eric from Nicosia.

  A U.S. passport with the usual navy blue cover, bearing the name of Jane Hathaway and an address in London. The picture had been taken at the Agency; it was a good likeness, despite the wig. Three Chanel lipsticks, all of them well used.

  A pen and pencil in a case.

  A matchbook from last night's bar at the Tacheles.

  A cell phone.

  A small hairbrush, with several black hairs from the wig wound around its bristles.

  A few phone numbers (London exchange) and jottings on crinkled slips of paper, some of them receipts from Jane's favorite pub in Hampstead.

  “And what is this?” Akbar inquired, his index finger thrust through an olive green metal ring. He held it up and twirled it slightly around his knuckle. A single rod about an inch long swung from its middle.

  “Don't you know?” Caroline asked him blandly. “It's a grenade pin.”

  The black brows lifted.

  “A curious item for a lady's purse, surely?”

  Caroline smiled.

  “My cousin Michael gave it to me years ago. He was a Green Beret.”

  Akbar twirled the pin once more around his finger, thoughtfully this time, then set it down beside the lipsticks.

  “Saleh will remain with you, Jane Hathaway. I shall go for a time and return. You must be patient. Sharif is a busy man.”

  He thrust her things back into the bag and, with a curt bow, turned for the door.

  Three

  Budapest, 9 a.m.

  “How are you feeling this morning, Mrs. Payne?”

  He always spoke to her in English, although the others used German. Sophie suspected that he thought her unworthy of his adored tongue. The electronic door had slid back so noiselessly that she had had no warning. He leaned there against the jamb with a newspaper in his hand. She sat up in bed and stared at him.

  Sophie had not been sleeping. She had been studying the ceiling in an effort to detect whether it had any stains on its surface, and if so, whether they would start to move. This might, she thought, be an indication of the recurrence of her illness. But for all her vigilance, the effects of anthrax would probably surprise her. As had Krucevic.

  “Considering the past twelve hours,” she said in answer to his question, “I'm fine.”

  It was a patent lie, but she had no intention of rewarding him with the truth.

  The mad surge for the door, her head bound in a blanket, her mouth stuffed with somebody's socks, her mind screaming with vivid, shaming panic. An arm belted around her waist. The jolting dash down echoing stairs. No one speaking, the sensation of cold and wet in the pelting rain. The child lying murdered on her mother's bed.

  Sophie was placed on the floor of a truck between Otto and Michael, sightless and mute, with a raging desire to weep burning in her nostrils. She suppressed it viciously, willing the grief to turn to hatred, a passion that would sustain rather than destroy her.

  “You have remarkable resilience,” Krucevic said now.

  “It's one of the great American secrets. We endure. Jack Bigelow has resilience, too. I wonder if he has more than you.”

  Krucevic smiled.

  “If you're suggesting this is a test of wills, Mrs. Payne, I'm afraid you romanticize the matter. This is not an affair of honor between two gentlemen, with yourself as the prize. Neither of us values you that much.”

  “I'm not concerned about myself. Except inasmuch as my life or death affects the fate of my nation.”

  “How admirable. And how difficult to believe. Do I detect a trace of hypocrisy, Mrs. Payne? Is it so important to consider yourself a martyr? I suppose it lends a certain style to death. If one cares about such things.”

  He threw her the phrases the way another man might toss potato chips to a dog, his mind entirely on other matters. The tension that had turned him rigid in Bratislava was gone; he seemed at ease, at home with himself, impervious to concern. Sophie fought with despair. If Krucevic could stand in her door without a care in the world, events must be turning his way.

  “What are you really after?” she asked.

  “Why should I tell you, Mrs. Payne?”

  “Because when you get what you want, you'll kill me. And before I die, I'd like to know why.”

  He studied her.

  “Have you so little faith in your government? Jack should have saved his time and money. That failed raid will have cost him something in respect.”

  “What raid?” she asked sharply.

  “The one that drove us out of Bratislava last night. Drove us, I might add, in a U.S. government-operated mobile listening post. Otto killed the agents and shot up their electronics before we loaded you in the back.” He pushed himself away from the wall and walked toward her.

  “Your people found you, Mrs. Payne. And no doubt they meant to rescue you. But in a lamentably half-assed manner. I had expected better of Mr. Bigelow. A Huey or two, at least, on the building's roof. But no
.”

  That accounted for his air of superiority. He had outwitted the U.S. government.

  Sophie bit back disappointment and thought, They're on my trail. They'll get him soon.

  “So let's take it as a given that I won't be rescued. Tell me what you're up to. Is it revenge? For the NATO air strikes in '99?”

  “The allied bombs destroyed Belgrade,” Krucevic said indifferently. “I despise Belgrade as much as the United States. I'm a Croat, Mrs. Payne, although I don't expect you to comprehend the significance of that fact.”

  “You are far more than a Croat, Mian Krucevic. You are an unreconstructed Ustashe fighter. You're a throwback to the fascist midnight of 1939. We'll agree that you enjoyed seeing the Serbian republic devastated by war. That you spared no tears for the Kosovar dead. A dozen mass graves here or there mean nothing to you. So what's the point? Why strike out against the U.S.?”

  He sat down on the bed next to her. She refused to flinch.

  “I know that you see me as a Croat nationalist, Mrs. Payne. That is an understandable mistake. I fought for my fellow people in Bosnia because if I had not, the Serbs and the Muslims would have overwhelmed them and the mass graves you speak of would have held only Croats.” He lifted his hand and waved it gently, in farewell to the past.

  “That is done. Bosnia is a nation torn in three. The rifts will never heal. What the 30 April Organization attempts to ensure, Mrs. Payne, is that the plight of the Balkans will never become the plight of Europe.”

  Viewed this closely, the scar at his temple revealed itself as the work of a bullet. Someone had once tried to kill him.

  “You're working for peace?” Sophie asked sarcastically. “That's why you bombed the Brandenburg and kidnapped me?”

  “I am working to eradicate a cancer,” he replied impatiently. “Do you know that is the most common Serb image applied to ethnic Albanians? I would go further and apply it to the entire Islamic world. Adherents of the Muslim faith are the most ignorant and uncultured peoples in existence. They bring strife, fanaticism, darkness, and violence wherever they breed. And they breed, Mrs. Payne, as no people has ever bred before. Their children are their deadliest weapon. The numbers are against the Aryan peoples of the West, Mrs. Payne. You must know that. It is happening in your own country. The people of northern Europe have two or three children, while your blacks and Hispanics have a dozen each. In time, democracy will be overwhelmed in their cesspool.”