But for a grenade pin — She had never felt so callow, so outmaneuvered. So goddamn stupid.
The steps rose up before her. A man in a black felt hat edged around her with a curious look, hastily averted, and clattered up to the platform. She had less than ten minutes to reach Potsdamer Platz and her hotel. She would have to change out of her clothes and wig before meeting Wally Aronson. And yet she lacked the will to move.
It was as she was standing there, surveying her ticket, that a white Trabant pulled up to the curb a few feet away.
“Hiya, doll,” said Tom Shephard. “Need a lift?”
Five
Berlin, 10:15 a.m.
“You,” Caroline said briefly.
“I might say the same,” Shephard replied, “only I'd be lying. Who are you trying to be, anyway? Liza Minnelli does Sally Bowles?”
“You were following me.”
“Right again. Boy, you Agency broads are quick.”
She didn't move.
“Oh, for crying out loud, get in. We're due at the Interior Ministry in fifteen minutes, and unless you want to sing “Cabaret' for all of Voekl's boys — which I don't think is politically correct, frankly — you're going to have to change your clothes. Which means we have no time at all.”
Caroline got in.
Shephard peeled away from the curb, leaving tire tread in his wake. Not bad for a Trabant.
“So explain this to me.” She was controlling her anger with difficulty. “You just happened to be driving by Alexanderplatz this morning and knew in an instant that the dark-haired woman reading the paper by the television tower was in fact me. Is that what I'm supposed to believe?”
“You're not supposed to believe anything. I'm not as devious as your employers. I'm quite happy to offer you the truth.”
“You know the bartender at the Tacheles.”
He shot her a glance.
“The Tacheles? You do get around. The only bartender I know runs a dark little hole near my house in Dahlem.”
“How, then?”
“I stopped by the Hyatt this morning to invite you to breakfast,” he replied. “I thought we could talk about the Brandenburg Gate without the entire embassy listening in. I wanted to hear what you had to say about 30 April. Guesstimate where they might be headed.”
Caroline studied him.
“You've hit a wall, haven't you? The bomb crater isn't giving up its secrets.”
“Not a wall,” he corrected, “a minor plateau. Nothing we couldn't surmount given a normal pace of investigation. But normal doesn't apply to this baby. Normal is when the Veep is having breakfast in bed in D.C. instead of in somebody's trunk. The entire weight of Washington is sitting on my shoulders right now, and I need a lead worse than a drunk needs detox.”
“You should write this stuff down. It's pure Hammett.”
He ignored her.
“It was clear from your cloak-and-dagger getup that you were already booked this morning. As I was pulling up to the hotel, you were walking out.”
She glared at him.
“You can change your hair and you can change your clothes, darling', but the walk's a dead giveaway. Some legs I don't forget.”
The anger fused.
“What in the hell were you doing following me? And don't give me that bullshit about hoping for a lead”
“I thought I was doing you a favor,” he said piously.
“A favor? You nearly got me killed. Shephard, you can't even surveil somebody discreetly. My friends spotted you the minute you pulled out behind them.”
“Your friends, as you choose to call them, would think a day without surveillance was like a day without sunshine. They'll get over it, believe me. And I had no intention of being discreet. That would have destroyed the purpose.”
“Which was?”
He swerved to avoid a furniture van parked in the middle of Grunerstrasse.
“I wanted them to know you were being tailed. Maybe they'd think twice before they killed you.”
“Oh, right,” Caroline said dryly. “Thanks.”
“Now, if you're done having a hissy fit,” he continued, “it's my turn. Why the clandestine meeting with a bunch of rag heads? Does Wally Aronson know about this?”
Shephard, Caroline noticed, had yet to mention Sharif's name. He had no idea whom she had met with, or why.
She began to relax.
“Should Wally know?”
“That's not for me to say. I'm not exactly in the Agency loop.”
“How true. End of interrogation.”
“Look.” He pulled the Trabant over to the curb and slammed on the brakes. Now he was angry.
“I enjoy the repartee, Carmichael, as much as anyone. It helps me hone my dating skills — ”
“What skills?”
“But I haven't slept in thirty-six hours, and I've had about enough of the attitude. I'm the head of this investigation.” Shephard's hand was on her arm. “The Vice President is missing. You fly in as the 30 April expert. And next thing I know, you're wearing a wig and getting into a car with three men of Arab extraction. I don't think it was a social call. I think it was an agent meeting. And I'm certain you're holding out on me.”
“I'll see you at the Interior Ministry,” Caroline said, and shook him off. She reached for the door.
“I have their license plate number, you know,” he shot back as she got out of the car. “All I have to do is call one of my friends in the Berlin police, and I've got an ID.”
“Call away, Shephard.” She slammed the door shut and leaned through the open window. “I'll be making a few calls myself. The Bureau might wonder why you wasted two hours trailing an Agency colleague this morning instead of supervising the crater.”
“Oh, I'm scared,” he deadpanned.
“Well, I'm not,” she said, and walked away.
“Good morning, Mr. Aronson.”
Christian Schoettler, the Interior Minister, was a trim man in his late thirties. He rose from his desk chair and offered his hand to Wally.
“I see that Mr. Shephard is late, as usual.”
“We were hardly on time ourselves,” Wally replied apologetically. “The traffic today — ”
“Yes, yes, it is because of the curfew. We have had the very devil of a time enforcing it, I'm afraid. Most of the Turks have been sensible and remained at home. But a few extremists thought to test the government's resolve.”
He spoke English, Caroline noticed, with a British accent. An old Oxonian.
“May I present my colleague from Washington, Caroline Carmichael?”
“Ah, yes.” Schoettler gave her a smile that failed to reach his eyes. “The Department of State's terrorism expert.”
“Merely one of them, I'm afraid,” she told him.
“But the one they chose to send here,” Schoettler pointed out. “That must mean a great deal. Please have a seat.”
The door behind them burst open under the force of Schoettler's harried male secretary.
“Herr Bundesminister, Herr Shephard is arrived.”
“So I see,” the minister said as Tom Shephard swung into the room. “How are you, Tom?”
“Just fine, Christian. Could use a little coffee, though.”
“Georg, a cup for Mr. Shephard, if you would be so good.”
“Did you hear the news?” Shephard asked the room in general. “We nearly found the Veep.”
Schoettler looked up. It was the first sign of animation Caroline had glimpsed in him.
“Where?”
“Bratislava,” Wally broke in.
“The raid failed. We lost two embassy officers. Bullets in the head.”
“My deepest sympathies, Wally,” Schoettler said.
Caroline's mind was racing. Where had Eric called from last night? Not Bratislava. He had killed the child in Bratislava before leaving for somewhere else. Had he sung a lullaby to the embassy watchers before he shot them, too?
“They traced 30 April to an apartme
nt complex,” Shephard explained, “and were trying to locate the actual place where Payne was held. But — ”
“But Krucevic moved first,” Wally concluded abruptly.
“So we're back where we started. With the bombing. Christian?”
There was a short silence. Then Schoettler's aide appeared in the door with a coffee cup, and the minister said, “Why don't you sit down, Tom?”
Shephard took the coffee and the last available chair.
Schoettler pulled a dark blue file across his desk and opened it.
“The Brandenburg bombing. One of the few cases in recent memory to be so quickly solved by the Berlin police.”
“Solved.” Shephard scowled and hunched forward.
“That's news to me.”
Schoettler tossed his file across the desk.
“Four Turkish suspects seized in a raid last evening have confessed to the murders of the television crew and the theft of the van. They have confessed to loading that van with a mix of fertilizer and gasoline and parking it did near the Brandenburg Gate. They have even confessed to detonating the bomb in the midst of Vice President Payne's speech. In a matter of hours, they will be charged with all three crimes.”
“But that's crap,” Shephard burst out. “The chemical residue found in the crater is from a batch of Semtex plastic explosive. We've isolated that much. You can't just — ”
“I'm afraid you must have isolated the wrong thing, Tom,” Schoettler interrupted coldly. “Whatever it is, it did not destroy the Brandenburg Gate. The suspects have confessed, you see.”
“Fuck the suspects!”
“Tom — ”
Wally Aronson half rose from his chair and laid a restraining arm on Shephard's shoulder. Caroline noticed that the station chiefs manner had altered subtly since Schoettler's speech. He was at once watchful and completely at ease, like a snake basking in the sun.
“Let's have a look at the file, shall we?”
He flipped it open and studied the Berlin police report.
“I see that all four Turks have previous records.”
“Yes.” Schoettler nodded. “Known anarchists.”
“But none of them has admitted to involvement in the Vice President's kidnapping.”
The Interior Minister shrugged.
“I understand another terrorist group has claimed responsibility for that.”
“And you think 30 April just seized the opportunity of the explosion,” Shephard interjected sarcastically, “to swoop down on the embassy and snatch our Veep?”
“You know quite well, Tom, that it is irrelevant what I think.” Schoettler's face hardened, and the quick brown eyes slid away. “We shall probably learn with time that the Turkish anarchists were in league with the kidnappers.”
“I'm sure we will,” Shephard retorted. “But you're better than this, Schoettler. How can you stand to eat this kind of shit every day?”
The Interior Minister rose. He extended his hand to Caroline.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Ms. Carmichael. I regret that you have come all this distance for nothing. Perhaps you can take the opportunity to see something of Berlin while you are here — ”
“That's it?” Shephard was on his feet now, squared off across the desk from Schoettler. His face was pale with fatigue, the eye sockets ghastly. “That's the meeting? You don't even want to hear what the Bureau techs have learned from the crater?”
“That reminds me, Tom.” Christian Schoettler touched his forefinger to his temple and frowned. “Now that the suspects have confessed, we no longer require the Bureau's assistance. The crater has been closed to your technicians as often o'clock this morning.”
“The hell it has!” Shephard retorted.
“Please accept our deepest thanks for your hard work, and the work of your Bureau colleagues.”
Shephard snatched the blue ministry file from Wally's hands and tossed it toward Schoettler's trash can.
“You can't do this, Christian. It's a violation of international law. American citizens died at the Brandenburg, and the Bureau is required to investigate crimes against Americans anywhere in the world. You can't bar us from the bomb site.”
“That is a point of law I am hardly qualified to address,” Schoettler said with one of his brief smiles. “But as we at the ministry understand it, the Bureau's jurisdiction is investigatory only. All responsibility for the collection of evidence rests with the host country.”
“Thank you for your time, Herr Bundesminister,” Wally said, and extended his hand. Schoettler shook it.
“It doesn't end here, Christian.” Tom Shephard's eyes blazed. “As soon as I walk out that door, I'm calling Washington.”
It took both Caroline and Wally to steer Tom Shephard out of the Interior Ministry and into the backseat of the station chief's waiting car. The LegAtt was no longer shouting by the time they reached the street, but from the venomous look on his face, Caroline knew Shephard was unreconciled.
“What exactly is the Bureau's jurisdiction?” she asked.
“It's exactly what the good man said,” Wally replied. “Investigatory only. We take what we can get in foreign crime scenes and hope for cooperation. Tom can threaten all he wants, but he's walking on thin ice.”
“I get the impression he does that a lot.”
“Like a Zamboni at full throttle.” Wally shot Tom a glance; the LegAtt wasn't biting.
“Believe it or not, Schoettler's one of the good guys. He's an SPD holdover from the Schroeder era. He's trying to work for Voekl without completely compromising his job.”
“Well, he just failed today,” Shephard snarled.
“Schoettler's back is to the wall,” Wally mused.
“I wonder what that means.”
“A truckful of fertilizer didn't blow the Gate,” Shephard fumed. “The device was strategic. It was targeted. It was plastic explosive with a battery and a timer, for God's sake, packaged in an acutely calibrated amount. Given a little time in the crater, we could have reassembled the device. Do you know what that could have told us?”
“Who made it,” Caroline answered, and thought of Mahmoud Sharif.
“So forget Schoettler,” Wally said briskly. “Forget the crater for a minute, and think. If Schoettler's stonewalling, then the Voekl government came down hard on the Ministry of Interior. Why would they do that?”
“They despise the Ministry of Interior,” Tom retorted. “Voekl works around it entirely, through the Volksturm guards. They're Hitler's Gestapo all over again.”
“That's why Schoettler has been permitted to stay.” Wally returned patiently to the point. “He's wallpaper. He makes Voekl look good. But this time, Voekl needed Schoettler's ministry to shut us down.”
“Which must mean,” Caroline said slowly, “that the chancellor is afraid of what the FBI will find in the crater.”
Tom Shephard pulled his eyes away from the window and stared at Caroline intently.
“We've already found evidence that contradicts their suspects. What else is there?”
Proof of complicity at the highest levels, Eric's voice muttered in her brain. Fritz Voekl's balls in a sling.
“Isn't it obvious, Tom? Something that connects Voekl to 30 April.”
Six
Budapest, 10:30 a.m.
Anatoly Rubikov was a man of few words, which is why he was still alive.
He crushed out the remains of his cigarette in the twist-off cap of his bottled beer, and immediately lit another. He smoked filtered cigarettes because Marya worried about his lungs and wanted him to quit. The filter was a bone he threw her, although filters meant nothing when a man smoked as much as he did.
Cigarettes were Anatoly's solace — an addiction, yes; a weakness, of course; but so much a part of his biological imperative that to abandon them now would be to poison himself with fresh air.
And the air of Budapest, when he thought about it, was scarcely clean anyway.
He smoked absentmindedly, th
e way other people breathed, his eyes fixed on the snowy television screen mounted behind the bar. Everything was murk — the air of the place, the yellow lights, the expression in the eyes of the waitress with bright orange hair and laddered stockings. The murk comforted him, and so he delayed the inevitable accounting, the walk out into the raw cold of the streets, the phone call he would have to make. It was ten-thirty in the morning. The television broadcast was in Hungarian, a language he had never understood.
He continued to stare at the screen, his beer drained to the faint tracings of foam, waiting for the face.
Could it be possible that no one had found him?
Anatoly closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the rim of the empty beer bottle. How could no one have found him?
The Hungarian National Bank occupied a building on the green swath of Szabadsag Ter, next to the embassy of the United States and across the way from Magyar TV headquarters. At this hour it should have been swarming with bankers and secretaries and clerks and factotums, all going about their legitimate business, and the man with the hole in his temple and the pool of blood under his neck should have been found by now. His picture should have flashed up on the television screen — not the man as he looked dead, but sleek and repellent in the full flush of power.
Perhaps they were keeping the mess under wraps, Anatoly thought. Assessing the damage. Deciding what could be told. If they waited much longer, Krucevic would take matters into his own hands.
And if I wait much longer, Krucevic will think too much about what I saw. He'll decide that a bullet keeps the best secrets.
The short, curling hairs at the back of his neck began to rise of themselves.
He crushed out the second cigarette and tossed a hundred-forint note on the counter. The orange-haired waitress followed him with her eyes as he left.
He placed the call in the Keleti train station, barely seven minutes before the Berlin train.
“Aronson,” he said thickly when the receptionist answered.
“Mr. Aronson is not in. Would you like to leave — ”
The Cutout cc-1 Page 23
