Blown

by Francine Mathews

  The third man wore an inexpensive suit of a polyester blend; his tie was perfunctory; his brown hair cut without the slightest imagination. His fingers, like the features of his face, were square and thick, the eyes he refused to fix on Caroline were of a muddy brown. He was the obvious choice—everything about him suggested a government functionary just one step removed from security guard—but Caroline’s instincts screamed otherwise.

  The elevator doors opened on twelve and they all pressed back against the walls to let her leave first. She walked quickly away, head down and card-key in her hand. At the threshold of Room 1223, she jammed it into the door’s slot, aware of the measured footsteps behind her. They would not follow her into her room—but she was determined they should see her enter it. She thrust open the door calmly and slammed it shut as they passed.

  Cuddy’s newspaper carefully hid a flat plastic bag the size of a sandwich. Stuffed within were a few square inches of plastic and something that resembled a dead animal. She lifted them wordlessly, her spirits rising. A prosthetic chin, a pair of cheekbones, a pert little turned-up nose. The dead animal was a head of auburn hair. On a scrap of paper tucked inside the bag a few words were written. Back parking lot, 15 minutes. Cuddy had just given her freedom.

  “Scottie’ll have your ass in a sling,” she said as he turned the wheel easily and drove toward the parking lot’s exit. Cuddy handled his small Japanese car with the precision and speed of an F-16 pilot; she tightened her seat belt.

  “I wasn’t followed.”

  Of course Cuddy had checked for surveillance. He knew how Scottie’s mind worked. If the CTC chief kept Cuddy employed, it was purely to track where he led.

  “I didn’t pay my bill,” she attempted.

  “I’ll take care of it. They’ve got your imprint, right?”

  “And most of my luggage.” She closed her eyes and leaned her red head against the leather seat.

  She’d found the Eurasian on the point of quitting his room as she walked out her door, Cuddy’s disguise hidden in her gym bag. Beneath the pert nose and the red wig she’d placed her laptop and Walther TPK, wrapped in a change of underwear. She took the elevator to the fitness center, and though the Eurasian went along for the ride and slipped a cell phone from his pocket as she left, he made no attempt to follow her onto the aerobic machines. She hadn’t used them.

  The women’s locker room was empty. In a cubicle, she’d straddled a toilet and quickly applied the latex facial features Cuddy had given her. These were the pride and joy of OTS—the Office of Technical Services—whose masters could change a Caucasian woman to a turbaned Sikh in a matter of minutes. The techniques had been learned at the feet of Hollywood’s king of special effects, and the latex pieces were so well crafted as to be indistinguishable from skin.

  In a matter of seconds her oval, narrow features became catlike and vaguely Slavic. The auburn wig, bobbed at the chin, turned her into a coquette. She was several inches shorter and light-years more relaxed in running shoes and loose-fitting yoga pants. Nobody—not even FBI surveillance—would connect her with the woman who’d crossed the Marriott lobby a quarter-hour before. She sailed out the front door without turning a head.

  “Thanks, Cud,” she said brusquely. “How in God’s name did you know I needed you?”

  “I heard what happened at the funeral. Is Carl Rogers okay?”

  “He’ll live. At least Jozsef’s safe.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a little weird,” he demanded as he breezed through a yellow light and headed toward the river, “that the kid pulled you out of that funeral at exactly the moment our shooter drove by? Doesn’t that make you think at all?”

  “He was sick, Cuddy. He puked all over my shoes.”

  “I told you. He wanted to go to Arlington too much. He pulled something, Caroline. It didn’t work—but the timing’s there. Too fucking good, if you ask me. Did anybody question him? FBI? Secret Service?”

  “They sent him back to the hospital,” she retorted tiredly. “I’m the one they wanted to screw to the wall.”

  He laughed. “Yeah. Your timing, by the way, left a shitload to be desired.”

  Was he right? Had Jozsef staged that white face, that choking vomit and the terrible helpless weight dragging on her arm? Did he know exactly who his father had recruited to kill?

  Cuddy glanced at her. “Shephard was spitting nails. All that security and his guys missed the car. Missed the gun. Missed the uniformed woman cop in the unmarked car. Hell, they probably waved her right through multiple checkpoints. He’ll be lucky if he has a job tomorrow.”

  She could imagine Shephard’s face: impatient, strained from lack of sleep, furious at himself and the wanton killing he should somehow have prevented. She wanted to find him, wanted to say that he was not responsible, not for this. Nobody was guilty but Ricin Boy himself and the woman who’d driven his car. But Tom turned his back on her and walked away without a word. He didn’t have time for Caroline and her half-truths, her protective gaps that left people dead on the ground. “You talked to him?” she asked Cuddy.

  “He called to tell me that as far as he was concerned, you were completely compromised and off-limits. End of story.” Cuddy downshifted and careened onto the bridge. He did not look at Caroline to see how she took the news.

  I can’t trust you, Caroline. You know what that means? I can’t even talk to you anymore.

  “The Detail asked for my contact information,” she managed. “Burning out of the hotel immediately after I gave it to them might not have been the best idea.”

  “Eric’s been arrested,” he said quietly. “That’s why I came for you. You can’t sit twiddling your thumbs in a climate-controlled box while Scottie runs a backhoe over your life.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” she burst out. “Do you have a gun I could just put to my head right now, Cud? Do you? Because I can’t take much more of this. You know?”

  “Don’t flip out on me, Caroline. Please.”

  “Sure. Fine. Who the fuck arrested him? FBI? Interpol?”

  “The BKA. He’s in Germany.”

  “Germany! Why the hell is he still in Germany? That’s the last place on earth he should be. Christ—of all the stupid . . .” She slapped the armrest in frustration. “It’s like the man wants to die, Cud. Stupid, stupid—”

  “You’re flipping out, Caroline.”

  “I think I’m allowed.”

  Cuddy did not argue. A red light changed to green. Somewhere on this Monday afternoon people were working at desks and thinking about simple things like what to have for dinner. What time was it in Germany? Five or six hours ahead of D.C.? Evening, anyway. Eric being systematically interrogated in a concrete-floored cell.

  At the thought of him—trapped, alone, desperate—she was filled with a fear and longing for him sharper than she had ever known. Eric. My love. Fight them. I’m fighting, too.

  “What happened?” she demanded. “How’d the Germans find him?”

  “Your old friend Wally turned him in,” Cuddy said.

  She stared at him, aghast.

  “Don’t look like that,” he muttered. “I told Wally to do it.”

  He took her straight into Washington at two-thirty in the afternoon, when the traffic was at something like an ebb. He drove her to a small apartment off MacArthur Boulevard just past Reservoir Road, with a galley kitchen and a racing bike suspended from the triangular space beneath the staircase. A bachelor’s pad, one bedroom and two baths with a home office-cum-den and a pullout couch for unexpected guests. The living room was square and sparsely furnished but you could climb through the front window with your coffee mug in the morning and stand on the roof of the bay window below. The place took up the top two floors of a hundred-year-old row house facing the canal.

  He had talked while he drove, in a voice so low she had to strain to catch the words, a voice that compelled her to listen.

  “Eric alone and hunted the length of Europe is exactly what Scottie wants,
Caroline. Eric alone is an invitation to murder, you understand what I’m saying?”

  “But—”

  “Think of the headline. Terrorist Gunned Down in Standoff with Berlin Police. Or Madrid. Or Istanbul. You can’t tell me the FBI hasn’t issued orders to shoot to kill. That’s Scottie’s dream scenario. The one he’s always had in his pocket.”

  Cuddy hadn’t looked at her much as he ricocheted along the riverbank toward Georgetown. The car hugged the wide curves of the Potomac at a speed that was nowhere near legal.

  “With Eric dead, finally dead, there’s nobody to screw Scottie’s perfect little world. We can’t give him that one, Carrie. We can’t let our Great White Chief walk away clean. We’ve got to fight.”

  “By shutting Eric in a hole?” she shot back bitterly. “Where the fuck are we, anyway?”

  Cuddy had pulled up next to a leafless cherry tree drooping over a cracked curb. A pink flamingo stabbed the mulch near a set of entry stairs.

  “Steve Price’s house.”

  “The reporter?” She was incredulous. “I don’t even know him.”

  “Exactly. So Ricin Boy’ll never think to look for you here.”

  He had thought of everything, it seemed. A change of clothes for the woman she’d become—black mini, stiletto heels, a set of breasts far more impressive than her own. As she stood with her small black shoulder bag in the center of the empty living room, he delivered his whole script in rapid-fire staccato. Al Capone with words of one syllable.

  “Wear the clothes and the Look when you go out. Wear them, Mad Dog. I want Caroline Carmichael to disappear from the face of the earth, you understand?”

  “What if the Bureau gets nervous?”

  “I’ll tell Shephard you’re heading to Hank’s for some R and R. Leave the number where you can be reached on Long Island. Then have Hank screen your calls.”

  She considered this; it might work. Hank was her great-uncle, the man who’d raised her from the age of twelve. Hank would die for her, if only she’d ask.

  “And don’t call me at work,” Cuddy warned. “If you need to meet, have Price get in touch. He can contact me without looking suspicious.”

  Caroline glanced despairingly around the unfamiliar apartment. “The poor sucker can’t realize the danger he’s in. What he’s taken on by helping me.”

  “He’s well paid.”

  “By whom?”

  “You, Carrie.” For the first time that day Cuddy smiled. “There’s a quid pro quo involved. You get a room that’s clean; Price gets your story. And God, does he want it. Just decide which one to tell him. Personally, I’d use the power of the press for all it’s worth.”

  “I should find another hotel. I could register as Miss—Miss whoever I am.” She shook the latex mask at him.

  “Jennifer Lacey.” He handed her a wallet. Driver’s license, Visa card, passport—all in the Look’s name.

  “Raphael just gave you this stuff?” Raphael was the legendary head of OTS. “What lie did you tell him?”

  “—That I’d recruited the wife of a terrorist,” he said indifferently.

  “You’re mounting an op!”

  “Damn straight.”

  She studied his face; as usual, the steady brown eyes gave nothing away, but by this time she could almost read Cuddy’s mind. “CTC is your cover job. Scottie’s your target. I’m your girl on the street and Eric’s the bit of business you’re using to distract the audience. What exactly do you want me to do, Cud?”

  “Stay alive. And work your leads. I can’t, sitting under Scottie’s nose.”

  Her leads. The names of five staffers in the Payne household and a twelve-year-old boy who might or might not be poison.

  “You can start with this.”

  He was dangling a CD-ROM in a plastic case.

  “You managed to save Eric’s disc?”

  “No. Scottie ordered me to hand it over and I watched while he destroyed it. But he didn’t think to ask if I’d made copies.”

  Of course Cuddy had made copies.

  “You took classified information out of the building, Cud.”

  “With Dare dead and the original destroyed, there’s no record we ever got Eric’s information. I think we can use it to undermine Scottie without admitting this disc ever reached the CIA.”

  “And what about Eric? What happens to Eric?”

  “The BKA has charged him with murder.” Cuddy pocketed her keys; apparently even her Jetta was to be confiscated. To be parked at Dulles while some blond double flew to JFK, if Caroline knew Cuddy. “His blood and prints are all over a stiff they found at the Berlin lab. We’ll extradite him, of course.”

  “That could take months.”

  “Not this time. The Germans are falling over themselves to look helpful. They want the credit for nabbing Sophie Payne’s kidnapper, and the public’s thanks for returning our terrorist to crucify. I’d give it three days before he’s home.”

  “Three days? Cuddy—that’s not enough time. Not enough to—”

  “Pin Scottie to the floor with a scalpel? We’ll manage it. We’ve got more friends than Scottie does.”

  She sat down abruptly on her suitcase, all the hopeless misery suddenly overwhelming her. Three days. She would lose him for good this time.

  “It’s not all bad, you know,” Cuddy said awkwardly. “Eric’s under twenty-four-hour armed guard and he’s guaranteed a ticket home. He’s got a chance to tell his story in federal court with the entire country watching. He’s got a chance, Carrie.”

  Instead of a bullet in the brain.

  She had to agree it was something.

  Chapter 27

  BETHESDA, 4:19 P.M.

  “What have you got for me, Kaylie?” Shephard demanded.

  He was standing just inside the yellow tape that separated a ghoulish band of spectators from the abandoned black limousine Norm Wilhelm had driven through Arlington National Cemetery that morning. Wilhelm was still sitting in the driver’s seat, hands in his lap and a slack expression of contentment on his middle-aged face; most of his brains were spattered over the armor-plated door.

  “Hair samples and some mucous,” Kaylie Marks answered briskly. She was a slight woman in aqua hospital scrubs; the bones of her face were prominent as a horse’s. Kaylie had spent nearly a decade in the Bureau’s Laboratory Division and was in charge of the forensic team dispatched to this deserted spot on the vast asphalt parking lot of White Flint Mall, after a bunch of suburban skateboarders had bolted in terror from the sight of Norm Wilhelm’s blasted cranium.

  The first police response had come at three-fifteen; it had taken another forty-five minutes to connect a random chauffeur’s murder with Jozsef Krucevic. His doctors had phoned the Secret Service, asking when the boy would be returned to Bethesda Naval. It was the first hint anybody had that Jozsef had vanished.

  And he didn’t walk away, Tom thought, leaving this mess behind him. The kid was in no state to walk.

  “I took the samples from the backseat and headrest.” Kaylie held up a plastic bag for Tom’s inspection. “Kid was sedated, right? That’d explain the drool. And he was under a blanket?”

  Tom nodded.

  “We found some wool fibers. We can compare this stuff with whatever data Bethesda Naval might have—but DNA sampling will take time, you know.”

  “Any blood?”

  “Nothing major in the back,” she said cautiously. Major blood didn’t need explanation; it was all over the front seat. “Just spatters we’ll probably find are from the driver. And this.”

  She dangled a second bag with a single hair in front of Tom’s nose. He strained his eyes to see it; brown and long: Jozsef’s was black and short.

  “Probably a woman’s,” Kaylie added. “Snagged on the headrest.”

  “Back or front?”

  “Back.”

  “But Jozsef was alone—”

  She frowned. “Way I see it, sir, is either she sat in the seat after the boy was taken
from the car—unlikely, since his samples weren’t disturbed—or she bent over to lift him out.”

  “And her hair swung forward and caught,” Tom said approvingly. “A woman drove the shooter at Arlington. Did this one kill Wilhelm?”

  “Not from behind. The shot to the chauffeur’s head was probably fired by a right-handed person sitting in the front passenger seat.” Kaylie set down the evidence bags and moved swiftly around to the right-hand door. Tom followed her. “He or she placed the muzzle flat against the temple and pulled the trigger. The powder burns are almost circular. And another thing—the bullet passed right through Wilhelm’s brain and exited over his left ear. We found it buried in the inner plating of the driver’s door.”

  “M16? Like Dare Atwood?”

  “No way.” She shook her head regretfully; like all the old hands of Laboratory Division, she relished a consistent investigation. “The bullet’s a thirty-two caliber. Handgun. Beyond that, I can’t tell you much. There are fourteen thousand kinds of ammunition manufactured in the United States, and none of it’s traceable.”

  “But this slug may match the bullet that killed the EMT on Memorial Drive. Any long brown hair in the limo’s front seat?”

  “None.”

  It made sense, Tom thought: The woman had driven the gray Chrysler K-car through Arlington National Cemetery while someone—Ricin Boy?—fired out the back window; then she’d taken Jozsef from the rear of the limo while her partner finished off Wilhelm. But how had the hit gone down? There was no sign of a struggle—no damage to the car or its driver. It was almost as though Wilhelm had been expecting to lose his passenger . . . as though he’d driven here to White Flint Mall, a bare few miles north of Bethesda Naval Hospital, on purpose to meet his killers . . .

  Tom straightened and stepped back from the bloodied limo door, his exhausted mind suddenly racing. Wilhelm had known his killers. He’d deliberately stopped to hand off the boy. Caroline’s voice—Caroline’s stubborn insistence spiraled through Tom’s ragged thoughts: Thirty April had agents in place inside the Naval Observatory. Wilhelm? Or one of his friends?