The Cutout

by Francine Mathews

  “Good evening, Mr. President.” Krucevic’s voice came from somewhere in the darkness beyond the floodlights. “Let us state for the record that we have in our keeping one Sophie Friedman Payne, Vice President of the United States and apostate Jew. It is Tuesday, November ninth, somewhere in Central Europe. Observe the copy of the International Herald Tribune you see on your screen; it bears today’s date. We are the 30 April Organization, and as Mrs. Payne is familiar with us, I must assume we need no introduction.”

  The camera lens retreated several feet, took in the gurney and Sophie’s shackled body.

  “Do you know, Mrs. Payne, why you are here?”

  “Because you murdered my bodyguard and kidnapped me,” Sophie said without hesitation.

  “You are here as a token of faith,” Krucevic amended patiently. “Of faith and commitment on both our parts to an enlightened course of action. Have we harmed you, Mrs. Payne?”

  “No. You’ve terrorized and humiliated me. But it takes a great deal more than that to harm me, Krucevic.”

  He had walked around the perimeter of the room until he could see her face, although he remained carefully off camera. His arms were folded across his chest, his dark eyes fixed on her own. “I’m afraid it does,” he said. “Otto? The hypodermic, please.”

  Sophie flinched involuntarily as the man approached. His face was now concealed behind a black hood, but his eyes were unmistakable—dull with malice and anticipation. In his right hand he held a needle. She jerked convulsively in her bonds.

  “It is to Jack Bigelow that I am speaking now,” she heard Krucevic say. “I hope I may call you Jack, Mr. President. I am about to conduct a demonstration. I know you will watch very carefully.”

  He nodded. With a sudden, sharp movement Otto plunged the hypodermic into Sophie’s thigh. She cried out at the shock of it, the gratuitous pain; behind his mask, Otto smiled.

  Eight people were assembled in the White House secure videoteleconferencing center, or VTC—a smallish space with an oblong table, twelve chairs, a wide-screen monitor, and a million-dollar array of telecommunications equipment. With its vaulted door and security panel, the room resembled a steel diving chamber; it might almost survive ground zero. Like all secure facilities, it was Tempest-tested: Any electronic or magnetic signals emanating from the space could be neither intercepted nor recorded by an outside party. There was a secure VTC room now in every major government agency; recently, they had been installed in the principal embassies worldwide. A multiparty network of secure voice, image, and data communication could thus be established within seconds.

  Thirty April was aware of that.

  At 9:07 that evening in Prague, the driver of a passing car threw a package toward the U.S. embassy guard-house on Trziste Street. The marine guards wasted half an hour assembling a technical bomb team before discovering the package held nothing more than clothing, a used hypodermic, and a videotape. The clothes were later determined to belong to the kidnapped Vice President. And the tape—

  The tape was screened by the ambassador, the CIA Chief of Station, and each of their deputies. Four people called from diplomatic dinners, clandestine surveillance, and one very inviting bed. At 10:12 Prague time, the ambassador contacted the White House.

  Now they were all watching—Bigelow, Finch, Tomlinson, O’Neill, Phillips, and Dare. They were joined by the President’s Chief of Staff and the White House Situation Room’s chief Intelligence officer. Bigelow was restless; he sat barely two feet from the screen, beating a tattoo on his right knee with a presidential pen.

  As Otto’s hand slashed down with the hypodermic, everyone jumped. And then glanced surreptitiously at one another. The air in the VTC room was stale with tension; Dare was sweating in her black wool dress. Mlan Krucevic was famous for one thing—biological agents. As everyone in the VTC room was fully aware.

  “Mrs. Payne has just been injected with a bacillus your Intelligence people will want to research,” said Krucevic’s voice. “I call it Anthrax 3A. My own hybrid of the common sheep ailment, quite deadly in humans. Where the disease normally takes three days to kill, mine can achieve death in three hours. Mrs. Payne should begin to exhibit the symptoms in about thirty minutes. Fever, blood in the stomach and lungs, a systemic infection. If the disease is allowed to progress unchecked, she will hemorrhage and die.

  “It is an immensely unpleasant death, Jack. I’ve tested Anthrax 3A extensively among the Muslim population of Bosnia-Herzegovina.”

  Bigelow shifted in his chair.

  Sophie Payne’s eyes, caught in the video lens, widened slightly. “I don’t believe you,” she said to the man off camera. “You’re bluffing. There was nothing in that needle.”

  “Why?” Krucevic’s voice retorted. “Because you’re a woman? Because you’re the Vice President of the United States? Neither fact is of the slightest importance to me. To me, Mrs. Payne, you are just another Jew. One who should never have been born.”

  “Killing me gets you nothing,” she shot back. “If I die, so does your bargaining power.”

  “Exactly,” Krucevic replied evenly. “Which brings us to hypodermic number two. Otto?”

  The audience in the VTC room had time to notice Sophie Payne’s labored breathing, the increasing ruddiness of her cheeks. Fear? Or something more deadly?

  And then a hooded figure appeared on camera, a fragile child in his arms.

  “You have a son, Mrs. Payne,” said Krucevic’s voice.

  “You know I do. You probably know his shoe size.”

  “You love him dearly, I believe?”

  Sophie did not answer.

  “I, too, have a son. This is my boy, my Jozsef.”

  Bigelow scraped his chair closer to the screen, stared at it intently.

  The boy lay limp in Otto’s grasp, head thrown back, thin legs slack. Beads of sweat glittered on his forehead. His lips, Dare saw, were flecked with blood.

  “Jozsef means everything to me,” Krucevic said. “But for my cause, like Abraham and his Isaac, I would sacrifice even my son. A half hour ago I injected Jozsef with Anthrax 3A. In two hours, his lungs will fill with fluid. In three hours, he will drown in his own blood.

  “Do you believe me now, Mrs. Payne?”

  “Jesus,” Bigelow hissed. “This guy’s one taco short of a combo platter. Does he really have a son?”

  “Yes.” Dare’s eyes stayed on the screen. “Whether it’s that poor kid or not, who can say?”

  “Sophie seems to think so,” Matthew Finch observed quietly. “She looks like hell.”

  But the camera lens had shifted to the hooded figure. He laid the boy on the floor. Something flashed in his hand—

  “Otto is holding the one thing that can save Sophie Payne’s life,” Krucevic told them. “An antibiotic developed in my own laboratory specifically to combat Anthrax 3A. This antibiotic will save my Jozsef. But whether it can save Mrs. Payne … that depends entirely upon you, Jack.”

  The needle slipped into the boy’s vein. The plunger went home.

  “Dare,” Bigelow snarled over his shoulder. “You got anybody out at the Agency who knows about this sort of shit?”

  “Yes,” she said, “although we need that hypodermic to determine what he’s really injected her with.”

  Bigelow nodded. His eyes were still locked on the video.

  “You know what we stand for,” Krucevic said reasonably. “A single Central Europe, rid at last of mongrel races and their degeneracies. A Central Europe free to pursue the highest goals of mind and body without the interference of the United States, a Central Europe founded on a genetically pure population. You, Mr. President, and your democratic policies stand in the way of that dream. You foster miscegenation and export its ideals. It’s a clever policy, of course—it allows you to divide and conquer. The United States as world policeman, isn’t that the goal? First you create the conditions for civil war, then you fly in and establish martial rule. And it all begins so gently. With gestures of good
faith, a McDonald’s franchise in Red Square.”

  Bigelow snorted.

  “Over the course of the next five days, a series of events will occur throughout Central Europe that might normally trigger an aggressive response from the United States. However, in deference to Mrs. Payne, you, Jack, shall not lift a finger to intervene. You will refrain from mobilizing NATO forces. You will placate your allies. You will turn a deaf ear to any appeals for help.

  “If you do otherwise, Sophie Payne will die an unpleasant death. But if you behave, Jack, we will eventually release Mrs. Payne unharmed. Inform the U.S. embassy in Prague of your decision immediately. If you decide to abandon Mrs. Payne to the needle, raise the flag in the embassy garden only to half-mast. If you accede to our demands, raise the flag to the top of the mast. At that point, Mrs. Payne receives my antibiotic. Should you go back on your promise, however … there is always another needle.”

  The camera lens crept closer to the Vice President’s face. As the image focused, the watchers assembled in the White House VTC room saw Sophie Payne’s lips form three words.

  No, Jack. No.

  TWELVE

  Washington, 3:30 P.M.

  JACK BIGELOW CRUMPLED THE FRONT PAGE of the Washington Post and tossed it toward a wastepaper basket. The Oval Office was considerably cooler than the VTC room, but everyone looked uncomfortable. Except the President. From his expression, Matthew Finch thought, Bigelow might be facing a round of golf rather than an international threat.

  In twenty-three years, Finch had won cases with Jack, faced bankruptcy with Jack, survived a vicious campaign for the presidency with Jack. The two men had fly-fished Montana, endured Finch’s divorce, and attempted Everest together—their least successful undertaking to date. It was popular among the press to describe the President as a genial bear of a man; they played up his good ol’ boy manners the way they celebrated Julia Roberts’s teeth. But Finch’s long apprenticeship in the art of Jack gave him a privileged understanding, an ability to read volumes in the slightest sign. Most men betrayed their stress in their bodies. They fidgeted. They ran their fingers through their hair. They might even take a swing at somebody when the situation deteriorated. Jack Bigelow, on the contrary, became more contained. He throve on adrenaline.

  Everything Mlan Krucevic had spit at the video camera had whetted Bigelow’s appetite for battle. Sophie Payne was a proxy for both men; from this moment on, their argument was with each other.

  “What the hell does he mean, a series of events in Central Europe?” Bigelow demanded.

  “Since he went to the trouble to bomb Berlin and kidnap the Vice President of the United States,” Finch replied, “I imagine we can expect fairly serious episodes of terror. Krucevic wants to bring the U.S. to its knees. He specifically instructed us to restrain our allies. That means his moves in the next five days will be bold, destabilizing, and played for high stakes. Sophie’s too significant a chip to waste on trivialities.”

  Bigelow nodded. “But where exactly will he land? And what can we do to spike the damage without sacrificing Sophie?”

  “May I suggest, Mr. President, that I task the Agency’s key country analysts to search for signs of instability in their accounts?” Since viewing the video, Dare Atwood looked older and grimmer, as though the skin of her face had turned from flesh to stamped metal. She was self-possessed as always; she sat in her chair awaiting the President’s pleasure; but Matthew Finch felt the sparks of urgency crackling off her frame. “I could establish a Central European Task Force. Staff it on a twenty-four-hour basis.”

  “I s’pose it can’t hurt, Dare. And get the NSA to process traffic for those countries on the highest-priority basis.”

  Al Tomlinson cleared his throat and glanced uneasily around the room. “What did he mean, calling Mrs. Payne an apostate Jew?”

  No one replied.

  “The Bureau did her security clearance,” Tomlinson persisted. “She was raised Lutheran, married Episcopalian.”

  Bigelow shrugged. “He’s a neo-Nazi, Al. He sees what he hates everywhere he goes. And Sophie’s parents were German.”

  “But they emigrated well before the war.” Tomlinson sounded aggrieved, as though his Bureau’s background checkers would be held responsible. “Mrs. Payne was born in the U.S. Jake Freeman knew Roosevelt. He wrote columns for the Washington Star.”

  “It’s irrelevant what Sophie might be,” Finch said flatly. “The important thing is what Krucevic believes. He believes she’s Jewish. That gives a fascist like him the right to treat her like dirt. He’s telling us loud and clear that he has no reason to spare her life.”

  “Think he’s in Prague?” Bigelow asked abruptly.

  “For at least as long as it takes to raise the flag in the embassy garden,” Dare Atwood replied. “Give it an hour. Then they’re gone.”

  “And you’re thinkin’ the flag should be raised.” He crumpled another sheet of newsprint, tossed it, missed. “Regardless of the cost. I can’t give this guy a blank check, Dare. Who knows what he might do? Blow up a plane. Or the Hungarian parliament.”

  “Or sprinkle Anthrax 3A on all the salad bars in the free world,” finished Matthew Finch. “Besides which, we have a policy of non-negotiation with terrorist groups.”

  “I know what our policy is, thank you very much.”

  Finch grimaced; being slammed in public was one of the privileges of a First Friend. “On the other hand, it doesn’t look very presidential to sit on your hands and leave a woman hanging out to dry. Especially one as popular as Sophie.”

  “Well, don’t that just drop the turd in the punch bowl, Matt,” Bigelow snarled. “You’re supposed to advise, remember? Not confuse.”

  “I’d suggest you pursue two courses of action at once.” Finch jotted something on a legal pad and glanced coldly at Bigelow over his glasses. “Publicly, you state that you do not negotiate with terrorists. Privately, you buy time. At least until Sophie gets that antibiotic.”

  “Time.” Bigelow glanced at his watch. “At least two hours have passed since they made the video. Jesus F. Christ.”

  He didn’t have to elaborate. If Sophie Payne had actually been injected with Anthrax 3A, she would be in agony right now.

  Finch passed Bigelow a sheet of paper. It was the biographic profile of Mlan Krucevic that Dare had offered him earlier. He had scrawled at the bottom, Find out who wrote this.

  Bigelow looked up. “Dare, who’s handling the 30 April account?”

  “A number of people, Mr. President. But that bio was written by a leadership analyst named Caroline Carmichael. She’s working the MedAir 901 investigation in the Counterterrorism Center.”

  “She seems to have a handle on this guy,” Bigelow said. “Once you’ve read this, nothing he said or did today is much of a surprise. Although I’m not sure I’d call him sane”.

  “Perhaps,” Finch suggested, “Ms. Carmichael should be sent to Berlin.”

  “These jokers aren’t in Berlin, Matt.” The President was impatient. “After that flag goes up, they may not even be in Prague.”

  “But they staged a brilliant hit in the heart of the new capital,” Finch persisted. “Somebody in Berlin knows the 30 April operation. Krucevic must have a network there, something that could be identified and exploited. Where else do we start if not in that square?”

  “Caroline is no case officer, Matt,” Dare protested.

  He dismissed this with a wave. “You’ve got case officers on the ground. Carmichael understands the terrorists’ thinking. She knows how to deal with Krucevic. She might even be able to predict where he’ll go. Hell, if it ever comes down to negotiation, she’ll be invaluable. We need her in Berlin.”

  “But she’s not accustomed—”

  “Then let’s call it a go,” Bigelow interrupted. “Get the girl on the plane.”

  In a previous incarnation, Dare Atwood had run the Office of Russian and European Analysis. She had trained Caroline Carmichael and followed her progr
ess through the bureaucratic ranks as an eagle follows the flight of its young. When MedAir 901 exploded thirty-three minutes after takeoff, it was Dare who met Caroline’s plane from Frankfurt and broke the news of Eric’s death. A cord of unspoken affection ran between the two women that made the present disaster all the more painful.

  But as she stared through her office windows at the dismal autumn night, Dare felt something like heartache. Her affection for Caroline was irrelevant now. She had only one course of action open to her; she would take out the cost in nightmares if necessary.

  Alerted by something—a footfall, a shift in atmosphere —she turned an instant before the tap came on her office door. Ginny, her executive secretary, peered around it. “Ms. Carmichael to see you.”

  “Hello, Dare,” Caroline said as she crossed the DCI’s carpet for the second time that day. She was one of the few subordinates who still called Dare by her first name. “Am I allowed to ask how it went at the White House?”

  “You are. As well as could be expected. Thirty April has made contact.”

  Caroline came to a dead halt midway between Dare’s desk and her easy chairs. Her pallor was suddenly dreadful.

  “You were hoping, somewhere in your mind, that it wasn’t Krucevic,” the DCI said softly. “So much for hope. Take a seat.”

  The younger woman did as she was told. After an instant, she managed the look of fixed calm Dare remembered from the morning’s conference. She doubted it had been evident for most of the afternoon. Caroline had spent the past four hours off campus, in the polygraphers’ relentless hands. Four hours of questions and seismic bar graphs, of emotions wildly fluctuating. At one point, the Security report noted, the subject had looked close to tearing the wires from her fingers and walking out. But the infernal machine had eventually given her a clean bill of health.

  “I’m sorry to call you back here at this time of night,” Dare told her. It was seven-thirty late by government standards.