The Cutout cc-1

by Francine Mathews

  “No. We used carrier pigeon. Also” — Mrs. Saunders glanced at her notes — “somebody throaty and Russian called. At least, I think he was Russian. Real hush-hush. A bad case of secret-agentitis, if ever I heard one. He hung up when I asked for his name.”

  Wally stood stock — still in front of the secretary's desk, considering this.

  “When?” he asked.

  “Maybe ten, ten-fifteen.”

  “Could it have been our developmental?”

  “Old what's-his-acronym? I don't know. Heavy smokers all sound the same to me. Particularly when they're foreign.”

  “Long-distance call?”

  “Either that or our line's bugged. Lousy connection.”

  Wally whistled tunelessly under his breath while his fingers riffled the papers in Mrs. Saunders's In box.

  “Where's Fred?”

  “He and Young Paul are out in the van, per your instructions.” Mrs. Saunders sat back in her desk chair and smiled nastily. “It's so nice to see Fred working again. He managed to get rid of That Girl, you know. Gone home to see her mother.”

  Wally looked up.

  “That Girl, Mrs. Saunders, is his wife.”

  “She'll get him PNG'd one of these days,” Mrs. Saunders predicted darkly. “Absolutely no discretion. Thinks it's a hoot that her husband's a spy. Hasn't the faintest clue spying's still a crime to the host country. How's McLean, sweetie?” This to Caroline.

  “Congested,” she managed. “I've got a nice little house in Arlington. Keep it rented. God help me if I ever go back.”

  Wally disappeared through the office's inner door, a vaulted one, thrown open to Mrs. Saunders's view. Tom and Caroline followed him inside.

  It might have been a gentleman's study — if the gentleman was a little paranoid.

  There were no windows: The Agency had long ago discovered that electronic emissions, even the tapping of fingers on a computer keyboard, bounced off glass and could be picked up by anyone remotely handy. Three workstations with computers and a motley collection of files dotted the space. The floor was carpeted in crimson pile that further deadened sound; the walls were lined with bookshelves. Within the walls, multiple layers of steel prevented electronic penetration. There was a document shredder, a combination safe, a few plants dying under fluorescent light, and a silver-framed picture of Brenda on Wally's desk.

  “The developmental wouldn't be your 30 April safecracker, would it?” Caroline asked.

  He raised an eyebrow at her, looking for all the world like a satanic Puck.

  “Do you need to know?”

  “I'd like to know. If he's calling from Buda and hanging up in a hurry, maybe he's on to something.”

  “Maybe he is,” Wally said smoothly. “If that was the developmental. But it's not like Anatoly to be spooked by Mrs. Saunders. We'll just have to wait until he calls back.”

  “What time is it in Washington?” Shephard demanded. He was, Caroline saw, still obsessed with stopping the destruction of evidence in the street below.

  “I don't think it matters, Tom.” Wally turned on his computer terminal. “You're not calling. Shut up and start thinking for once.”

  To Caroline's surprise, Shephard submitted to the abuse. He slumped into a chair and fixed his eyes on his shoes.

  “You need a car and a good driver.” Wally stuck his head into Mrs. Saunders's province.

  “Oh, Gladys?”

  “Yes, Walter?” she replied acidly. “Any of the FSNs report for duty?”

  FSNs — Foreign-service nationals — were local folk who served as support staff for the U.S. embassy.

  “There's Ursula.”

  “Ursula would stick out like a sore thumb at a construction dump. Get me Tony.”

  “Tony was killed in the bombing, dear,” said Mrs. Saunders imperturbably.

  Wally was silent for a moment.

  “Okay. How about Old Markus?”

  “Old Markus it is.” She leaned on an intercom button and buzzed.

  “Old Markus is perfect,” Wally told them.

  “You're sending him out after the dump truck,” Shephard said.

  “Why not? Got a better idea?”

  “And then what — he sifts through the debris in the dead of night?”

  “I doubt he'd know what to look for.” Wally took off his suit jacket and reached for a cable.

  “You're the forensics nut, Tom. You've got all those Bureau teams twiddling their thumbs over at the Hyatt. Why not put 'em to work?”

  “It might be considered against the law.”

  “German or U.S.?” Wally tore the cable in half and stuck it in a burn bag. “But I see your point. Whereas if I got involved, it'd still be against the law, but you'd feel better, right?”

  Shephard said nothing. Wally smirked at Caroline.

  “There it is in a nutshell, Mad Dog. The Agency avoids evidence like the plague, because evidence is admissible in court, where sources and methods never go. But we love to help other people find evidence. It makes our little day. And are they grateful?”

  “Once in a while,” Shephard muttered.

  “Not often enough.”

  “Okay, Wally,” he said in exasperation. “I'm grateful for Old Markus. Let him follow the damn truck, and we'll decide later how to deal with whatever he finds.”

  And at that moment, the secure phone rang.

  “Suicide,” Wally said in disbelief. He sank down into his chair, fingers gripping the receiver. “Why commit suicide if you've just embezzled the nation?” His eyes were fixed on Caroline's face, but there was no expression in them; he might have been looking at a featureless wall.

  “All right, Vie. I understand. I'll get back to you tonight.”

  He hung up.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Vie Marinelli, from Budapest.”

  “And?”

  “Istvan Lajta committed suicide last night. Or early this morning.”

  Shephard looked up.

  “The Hungarian Minister of Finance?”

  “Lajta killed himself?” Caroline was shocked. “But he's young — a rising star in the Liberal Party! People talked about him as a future prime minister.”

  “His assistant found him this morning. One bullet through the temple, gun lying on the floor.” Wally grimaced. “His wife identified it as Lajta's.”

  “He had a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago,” Shephard protested.

  “Even that, it seems, is no shield against bullets.”

  “They're sure it was suicide?” Caroline persisted.

  “There was a note — or a confession, I guess — typed on the guy's computer screen.”

  She snorted.

  “Anybody can type, Wally. What'd Lajta confess to?”

  “Embezzling the Hungarian treasury.”

  Shephard whistled.

  “That includes at least a hundred million in IMF loans. The ministry is scrambling to sit on the news and trace the funds.”

  “So they called Vie Marinelli.” Caroline immediately understood. The CIA's Chief of Station was usually declared to a friendly host country, and depending on the relationship, he could serve as a governments sounding board in times of crisis.

  “Vie has asked for Secret Service assistance. The Treasury guys are pretty good at chasing down electronic transfers.”

  “But why?” she asked, working it out. “Why put a bullet in your brain if you've just pulled off the heist of the century?”

  “Remorse?”

  She groaned.

  “Oh, come on, Wally.”

  “He was murdered,” Tom Shephard said brusquely.

  Caroline caught his meaning and threw it back. “The only reason to kill Lajta —”

  “Is if he didn't do it,” Tom finished. “Whoever stole the cash left Lajta holding the bag.”

  “Vie seemed certain it was suicide,” Wally objected, “and he's not stupid. The building hadn't been broken into—” He stopped sh
ort and went very still.

  “Your friend Anatoly,” Caroline said grimly. “No wonder old what's-his-acronym hung up on Gladys.”

  Wally didn't reply. Instead, he reached for the phone and dialed a number. But before it rang, he slammed down the receiver.

  “If Lajta died sometime during the night, Anatoly won't even be back in Hamburg yet. Shit. I've got to get to him —”

  “Before Krucevic does.” Caroline picked up a silver letter opener and studied the engraving a message of thanks from one of Wally's previous postings. “Do you seriously think Krucevic will let him go?”

  “I don't know.” Wally sank back into his chair, defeated.

  “Why would 30 April steal from the treasury?” Tom Shephard asked. “If you're going to rob a bank, rob one in Switzerland. Not Hungary. I don't get it.”

  But Caroline did.

  “Fritz Voekl doesn't want Switzerland,” she said. “Switzerland is clean and well ordered and more efficient than ten Germanys. Fritz wants a reason to clean up the wrong side of the tracks.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Voekl needs a cause. A crisis. He wants a plausible reason to send German troops throughout the neighboring countries. The countries that can't stop the Muslim hordes from invading the German sphere of influence. Voekl wants an invitation to take over.”

  “The reconquest of the Third Reich?” Shephard was dismissive.

  “Yes,” Caroline retorted. “What else is so risky it requires a hostage Vice President and a hamstrung U.S.?”

  She drove the letter opener deep into the soil of Wally's wilting plant.

  “The chancellor is attempting something so enormous so barefaced that only the most desperate measure can sustain it. Voekl wants Jack Bigelow to stand aside while he annexes Central Europe.”

  “First he's funding terrorists, now he's Hitler. That's ridiculous”

  “Is it? He's already got people in Prague. A couple of bombs and a pat on the back managed that one. Now Hungary. When news of the treasury heist gets out and it will, no matter how tightly they hold a lid on it fortunes will be lost. The currency destabilized. We'll see blood in the streets. And I guarantee you that Voekl's Volksturm won't be far behind.”

  “I can't believe you're saying this. Ask anybody in Germany, they'll tell you the Reich was an aberration.”

  “If it happened once,” Caroline argued, “it can happen again. Only more subtly this time, while nobody's looking. It'll happen with money and friendship and technical assistance and some brilliant political maneuvering on the side.”

  “Not in our lifetime,” Shephard insisted. “We wouldn't allow it.”

  “We just did,” Caroline said.

  Eight

  Berlin, 2:45 p.m.

  Young Paul, as Mrs. Saunders had called him, pulled his plumber's van to the curb in front of the children's playground on Kolmarer Strasse in Prenzlauerberg. It was a wonderful playground, famed throughout Berlin, filled with toy mills, large pumps, a variety of pulleys and chutes — an industrial wonderland for city children. Mahmoud Sharif's small boys, ages four and two, loved it. They lived only a hundred yards away, in an apartment building on the corner of Knaackestrasse.

  Paul was driving a serviceable white van in the Agency's possession, a van whose sides proclaimed in correct German lettering that he was a plumber of distinction. He eased along Kolmarer Strasse until, from the vantage of his driver's seat, he had an unobstructed view of Sharif's building. It was five blocks and a world apart from the safe house Sharif had used that morning.

  Paul's sleek blond hair was covered with a white cap, and he wore canvas overalls in place of his usual Italian suiting. Behind him, in the body of the truck, sat Fred Leicester and thirty thousand dollars' worth of electronic equipment.

  Paul turned off the ignition and delved into a paper sack of lunch. It was well after the German workman's usual hour for eating, but perhaps the plumber of distinction had been preoccupied earlier with an emergency. He brought forth some bread and wurst and a bottle of pilsner and proceeded to gaze enraptured at the horde of youngsters screaming among the iron cages of the play structure. It was a working-class neighborhood; Prenzlauerburg had always been so, under the kaiser and the Nazis and then the Communists and now the West. Lately it had submitted to a rage for gentrification. But many of the young faces were dusky and exotic, the hair uncompromisingly black.

  Paul ate slowly. Inside the van, Fred fiddled with buttons and winced at the whine in his earphones.

  In the building on the corner of Knaackestrasse, Mahmoud Sharif cleared his throat and flushed a toilet. The four-year-old slapped his brother and stole a toy. A woman named Dagmar — spiky blond hair, beautiful eyes rimmed in kohl — picked up the baby and carried him into the kitchen. She spoke to him in German, her voice husky with smoke.

  Paul took a swig of beer. Fred listened, and waited for a call.

  “Wally?”

  The COS looked up from the sandwich he was eating and said, “Yes, Gladys?”

  She glared darkly but let it slide.

  “The boys just called in. They're in position outside Sharif's apartment.”

  “Thank you, Gladys.”

  “Oh, will you stop?” Her head disappeared.

  Caroline's nerves fluttered to life.

  “Would that be Mahmoud Sharif?”

  Wally reached for a napkin.

  “Paul and Fred are out trolling. Just in case Sharif has anything to say.” He glanced at Tom Shephard, who remained slumped in his seat.

  “Tom, you Bureau guys ever follow this clown?”

  “Not on my watch. Palestinian bomb maker, right?”

  “Hizballah's finest.”

  “I thought he'd reformed.”

  “So did I. But Carrie tells me that Headquarters picked up Sharif's name in connection with 30 April.”

  “Really.” Tom sat up and twisted to gaze at Caroline. He was thinking, she knew, of the black wig and the gray Mercedes he had followed that morning.

  “A Palestinian in bed with the neo-Nazis … I suppose there have been stranger things. Like the reconquest of the Reich.”

  “They have a common cause,” Wally observed. “Killing Jews.”

  “So you think Sharifmade the bomb that blew the Gate?” Tom whistled softly.

  “I can see why that would make him interesting to Sally Bowles.”

  “Who?” Wally asked around a mouthful of ham.

  “Cabaret,” Caroline supplied. “Berlin in the thirties. Sally Bowles in a top hat and fish nets Or should I say Liza Minnelli? Tom seems to think I look like her.”

  “But you're blond.”

  “And I can't sing.”

  Wally gave it up. Tom continued to study her coolly, but to her relief he said nothing of rag heads or Alexanderplatz. She made a mental note to request a new identity when she got back to Langley. Jane Hathaway was as good as blown. And as for Michael O'Shaughnessy...

  In all ignorance, with haphazard luck, Wally was on Michael's trail. Sharif could lead the station right to Eric's door. And if he did? Disaster. For Sophie Payne, for the Agency, for Eric —

  No, not her fault if Eric met disaster. He had brought that on himself.

  All the same, anguish surged thick in her throat. She had done exactly what Cuddy Wilmot had warned her against: She had handed Eric's contact to the bombing investigation. And now Dare Atwood must be told, before events spiraled out of control.

  “Can I use a secure phone, Wally?” she asked. “I'd like to call Headquarters.”

  Sharif surfaced about an hour after Paul parked the van in front of the playground. By that time, Paul had exhausted his wurst and finished the beer and moved on to the examination of a German soccer magazine, as though plumbers of distinction had nothing better to do than kill a Thursday afternoon. When the phone call came, he and Fred were almost caught unaware — because Mahmoud Sharif had kissed his wife and muttered something in Arabic to his children and had left the
apartment on Knaackestrasse completely.

  He swung into view for the briefest instant: a dark-haired, tall man in a black leather jacket, peering intently at the corner. His eyes passed over the plumber's van, the seething play structures.

  Paul was absorbed in reading about a test match with Liverpool, parsing out the difficult German sports jargon he had never been taught at Langley.

  Satisfied, Sharif unlocked the door of his gray Mercedes and slid behind the wheel.

  Fred vaulted into the van's passenger seat, cursing, and screamed at Paul to follow the Benz.

  They lost a few seconds. That was a good thing, actually, because Fred calmed down and Paul was prevented from dashing out after the gray Mercedes like the inexperienced and overeager first-tour officer he was.

  Fred speed-dialed a number on his cell phone.

  “Wally, we're following the subject. In case he decides to make a few calls on the road.”

  “Where's he headed?” Wally asked.

  Fred studied the car in front of him.

  “West,” he said. “On Elbinger Strasse.”

  “Think he'll pick up the highway?”

  “Don't know.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  The Mercedes abandoned Elbinger Strasse for Osloerstrasse, found Highway 100 and then Highway 110, and appeared, for all the world, to be heading for Tegel Airport. But just as Fred had decided that Mahmoud was taking off for a little R and R in that terrorist playground of choice, the island of Malta, the steel gray car shot past the airport exit. It headed north.

  He led them straight to the forest in the middle of Reinickendorf. Here the Schloss Tegel rose like a neoclassical dream above the turgid waters of its lake. It had once belonged to the brothers Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, one the founder of Berlin University, the other a scientist and explorer. Not the usual haunt of a Hizballah bomb maker.

  “What the hell do I do now?” Paul asked desperately. He had come to a standstill, the van well back from the castle's parking lot. They were screened from their quarry's view by a well-trimmed hedge. But Sharif's black hair and leather jacket were just visible.

  At this hour and this season, the castle was deserted: no schoolchildren skipping stones at the swans; no swans, for that matter. Only the avenue of lindens, a deserted gravel walk. The car park was virtually empty. Sharif let the Mercedes idle near the single other car — a long black Daimler sedan with a uniformed driver — and got out.