The Cutout cc-1
Page 40
“We owe that much to Sophie. Having failed her in every other respect.”
Dare Atwood bowed her head.
“May I say, Mr. President, how deeply I regret the Vice President's death?”
The President stared out the Rose Garden window. At this hour of night, a spotlight lit the bare canes; they threw a shadow like barbed wire across the withered lawn.
“I know you did everything possible,” he said. “Don't know what else we coulda done. But I'm sure I'll be reading about this fiasco in the Washington Post for the next six months.”
So much, Dare thought, for mourning Sophie Payne.
“How much access should the Agency afford the press, Mr. President?”
He studied her.
“The Agency? Or your analyst — the Carmichael woman?”
“She's something of a heroine,” Dare observed delicately. “The fact of the Vice President's death takes nothing from the extraordinary courage and brilliance Ms. Carmichael displayed. That should not go unrecognized.”
Jack Bigelow considered the point. A heroine might be useful at dispelling the funk of failure. But they would have to be careful how they handled Carmichael.
“There's just one question I gotta ask, Dare.”
“Yes, sir?”
“The Sarajevo cable says she used a homing device to find Sophie in that tunnel. But who planted the transmitter — and where, exactly, did your gal get the device?”
Dare felt a tremor between her shoulder blades and stood a little straighter.
“From someone within the 30 April Organization, sir. That much is obvious. If difficult questions are asked, I suggest we refer to our constant need to protect our Intelligence sources and methods. That tends to put an end to certain conversations.”
Bigelow tossed a copy of the Financial Times across his desk. Even upside down, Dare knew what the headline said: American's Body Discovered in Terrorists' Lair.
“You realize the kind of stink this could cause?” Dare returned his gaze steadily.
“I haven't read that piece yet, sir.”
“You in the habit of runnin' rogue operations, Dare?”
“Absolutely not, Mr. President.” She hesitated. “The groundwork for that ... operation ... was laid during my predecessor's tenure.”
Bigelow scowled.
“And no one saw fit to inform you of it?”
“No, sir.”
“Wonder how many other DCI's that bastard Sorensen has end-run.”
Dare had asked herself the same question. Had Scottie made a practice of deceiving his superiors? Or was her case special — a higher threshold of mistrust — because she was a woman with no operational experience?
“Mr. Sorensen has already proffered his resignation,” she told the President.
He shook his head.
“We can't accept it in the present climate. Too many questions would be asked. And Sorensen might feel obligated to answer them.”
“I agree.”
The President crumpled the Financial Times and tossed it in his wastebasket.
“Watch your back, Dare,” he advised her. “You're not careful, son of a bitch will have your job next.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
Tom Shephard caught up with Caroline thirteen hours after Delta Force did.
He stood in the doorway of her room — the embassy had pulled rank with the Sarajevo hospital and insisted it be private — and studied her. She was sound asleep. Her head lay slantwise across the pillow, her blond hair lank from several days' neglect. The bandaged collarbone was just visible through a gap in her gown. The room was filled with dusk and the green glow of a fitful fluorescent tube, so that the quality of her skin was cadaverous; nothing of Caroline's force or spark remained.
He had not entered a hospital since the day five years before when his Jennifer had died. He found he was still not ready. With a flutter of panic, he turned to go.
“Hey, Shephard.” Perhaps it was her wound that had stripped her of all defenses, or the fact that the long, hard quest was done. Whatever the reason, she looked at him baldly and stretched out her hand. He understood then just how lonely she was — how much in need of human contact.
He took her fingers between his own and squeezed them gently.
“Couple of inches to the right, Mad Dog, and you wouldn't be here,” he said with a nod toward her bandage.
“Couple of inches to the left, and I'd be home by now,” she retorted.
He grinned at her, his spirits rising suddenly, the ghost of that lost other love lifting as quietly as a bird from his shoulders. He pulled a chair close to her bedside.
She studied his face as though nothing but the truth could possibly be read there. He wondered if she understood how much he had mistrusted her — and how much he had wanted to believe. He decided that neither was worth saying right now.
“How's the boy?” she asked. “How's Jozsef?”
“Not good. They've got him pumped full of drugs from the embassy stores — but he hasn't turned the corner yet.” The corner being an S-bend between death and life, sharp enough to derail a train.
“We're thinking about airlifting him to Germany.”
“No.”
“Caroline — he needs an I.C.U worthy of the name.”
“He'd get far better care in the U.S.”
“But it's farther away. He could die in transit.”
“We are not sending him back to Germany. Not even to a NATO base. He has no one left, Tom — no one. You heard about Mirjana?”
“There may be supplies of the Anthrax 3A-specific antibiotic in Berlin,” Shephard attempted. “At VaccuGen.”
“So get your buddies in the BKA to break into the warehouse! Send some drugs home! The CDC would kill for a sample.”
Dare Atwood, Shephard reflected, had already suggested something similar in a teleconference with Embassy Sarajevo.
“But don't drop that kid smack in the middle of Fritz Voekl's camp,” Caroline insisted. “He deserves a break. Sophie Payne would have wanted that much—” She broke off and bit hard at her lip.
“Fritz Voekl shot himself two hours ago.” Caroline's eyes widened fractionally. Then surprise gave way swiftly to calculation, so that Shephard might almost have believed they were back in Berlin, briefing Ambrose Dalton.
“Who took over? His deputy party chief, or—”
The corners of Shephard's mouth twitched. Her case could not be that desperate if she was already analyzing.
“Get some sleep, Carrie,” he ordered. “I'll talk to the ambassador about Jozsef Krucevic.”
“Talk to the CKA,” Caroline ordered, “then come back and tell me who's running Germany. I want to know!”
“But you don't need to know. Mad Dog,” he said. “Not yet.”
The body of the Vice President of the United States was returned to Washington two days later. Jozsef Krucevic accompanied his lady on the plane, a dirty white rabbit's foot clutched tightly in his hand.
Jack Bigelow and an honor guard were waiting on the tarmac. So were the press crews of thirty-four nations and a crowd of nearly a thousand people, held back by a phalanx of helmeted police. The coffin was draped in the American flag; the mood was solemn. Peter Payne laid his cheek on Sophie's casket before fifty million television viewers, then paced slowly behind the honor guard to the waiting hearse.
Jack Bigelow put his arm around the young man's shoulders and said a few words the microphones could not catch. Something, probably, about sacrifice and sorrow. Peter Payne nodded and extended his hand.
Later, the pundits would say a torch of some kind had been passed.
But before all this occurred — before the motorcade to Arlington and the Newsu'cek cover of Caroline Carmichael, before the presidential letter of appreciation and the Bronze Intelligence Star — there was a different sort of homecoming, in a freight hangar at Washington Dulles, and Scottie Sorensen was the only person there.
He stood wit
h his hands in his pockets while they wheeled the coffin forward on a gurney, a medical examiner at his side. “Are you ready, sir?” the attendant asked him. Sorensen nodded, his expression debonair as always. He was not required to make a formal identification of the body. It would probably be unpleasant. There had, after all, been an explosion. But Scottie thought he might sleep better, nights, if he knew for certain that Eric Carmichael was dead. Eric had possessed too many secrets.
They lifted open the casket's cover. Scottie stared down at the blond hair, the corpse riddled with shrapnel. Most of the facial features were missing. He studied one hand and an arm. Ugly red weals crisscrossed the wrist. Eric had, after all, been tortured; but these scars were old. These scars had healed years before. They were the marks of a razor blade inexpertly applied by a man who hadn't really wanted to die.
He took a step backward. He motioned that the casket should be closed. He drew a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it delicately against his nose.
“Can you identify this man as Michael O'Shaughnessy?” the medical examiner asked.
Scottie hesitated. There were so many possible answers.
“His name is Antonio Fioretto,” he said at last. “An Italian national, and a terrorist.”
And for a wild instant, he almost laughed.
About The Author
Francine Mathews spent four years as an intelligence analyst for the CIA, where she was trained in Operations and served a brief stint in the Counterterrorism Center assisting the investigation into the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
The author often previous novels, she lives and writes in Colorado.
Visit Francine Mathews's website at www.francineinathews.com.
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