was one whose information had proved accurate over time; an untested one offered intelligence that couldn't easily be verified or that was too recently reported to assess. But any source with good access was inherently more valuable than one without.
Unless that access was used to sell false information. Krucevic was certainly clever enough to plant a mole in the CIA's turf; but what had this one actually reported? That the good doctor had shot two of his people in an internal purge.
That he was driven to wipe Islam out of Central Europe. Nothing particularly earthshaking, and hardly worth Krucevic's brilliant effort at deception. A 30 April mole would have been put to better use.
And yet Caroline felt an almost sickening surge of excitement at the thought: A source with good access to 30 April existed. A source who might know where Eric was. A source who could lead them to Vice President Sophie Payne.
His code name and history could be found in one of the DO's asset files, to which Caroline was routinely denied access. She was an analyst, not a case officer; she had no clearance for information that linked a source to his identity, a code name to an address. But Scottie Sorensen and Cuddy Wilmot did.
She checked the report's date and origination. The TD had been disseminated the previous February from the DO's Hungarian branch. Which meant the asset was probably handled by Buda station.
“Hey, Mad Dog, could I see you in my office for a minute?”
She gasped involuntarily, clutching the file to her chest.
“Cuddy, you scared the hell out of me. What's up?”
He grimaced.
“Nothing major. Just an evaluation I'd like you to sign.”
It was a deliberate lie, and Caroline saw with mild shock that they had become a cell within a cell, collaborators in a subterfuge.
“Okay,” she said neutrally, and tucked the Krucevic file under her arm.
“Interesting reading?” Cuddy inquired as they walked toward his office.
“Nothing you haven't seen before. They like to say that leadership analysis is the People magazine of Intelligence, but I don't think People will be running this stuff anytime soon.”
“Let's pray for that, shall we?” He shut the door firmly behind her. He had abandoned his glasses, and the hazel eyes were bloodshot from hours of scrolling through text on a computer screen. The look on his face — self- absorbed, absent, as though he pursued a line of thought only remotely connected to the scene before him — was one Caroline knew well. Cuddy was in the grip of the chase. Until he nailed Sophie Payne's kidnappers, he would abuse his body, his brain, and the people around him.
“You need a cigarette,” she said, dropping into the seat before his desk.
“Or a good long run.”
“And what do you need? A leave of absence?”
“Answers to a lot of questions would be just fine. Or a shoulder to cry on.”
“Why don't you call Hank?”
“Hank's shoulders are a little too well tailored for tears. Besides, I haven't talked to him in nearly a year.”
“Then I'd say it's high time.”
“He never liked Eric, Cud. And what could I tell him? It's all a close hold anyway.”
Hank. His silver-haired profile rose in Caroline's mind, shimmered there like the outline of a perfect knight, an old-world cavalier. The acute gaze, the measured speech. Hank never swerved from the path of reason. He'd taught her everything she knew, and most of what she'd forgotten.
“The DCI would advise me not to talk to my lawyer,” she added. “Even one in my family.”
“Not all Hank's counsel is professional.”
Caroline shrugged in discomfort, and Cuddy dropped the subject. They stared at each other for a few seconds in silence, uncertain what to say. Every topic seemed forbidden.
“Feeling betrayed?” Caroline asked finally.
“Feeling stupid,” Cuddy replied.
“Sometimes they're the same thing.”
“Scottie's asked me to head up the Berlin Task Force. I got the impression I had no choice.”
“This is where I say, “That's why they pay you the big bucks.” Right?”
“Not if you want to survive.” His eyes were unreadable. “I've had just about as much as I can take, Carrie. I've spent thirty months investigating a crash that didn't kill my best friend, and I've just been told by the DCI herself to suppress information critical to the recovery of the Vice President. I don't know why I'm still here.”
“Maybe,” she suggested, “because you think you can fix it. Big mistake. Cud.”
He laughed harshly and looked away.
She felt a sudden rush of sympathy for the man. He was a good person, a faultlessly honest person, who didn't deserve this kind of painful ambiguity.
Never mind that ambiguity was the human condition: Cuddy lived in a happy mess of absolutes. He refused to eat meat, but his fingertips were permanently stained with nicotine. He stood in the rain-filled doorways at the end of the Agency's corridors ten times a day, burning his death ration and hoping to save his lungs later with a three-mile run. He fought the last good fight in the U.S. government tracking terrorists but believed Amnesty International was a front for Communist insurgency. He spoke five languages, all of them well, which was something that most people did not know. Cuddy never advertised.
Each morning, he drove down the Maryland side of the Potomac while Caroline drove up the Virginia. He wore jeans and carried his work clothes in a backpack.
He parked his car on Canal Road and canoed across the Potomac to the Agency's foot. Those last few moments, Caroline thought Cuddy gliding alone through an arrowhead of water were all he could really claim of his day.
“Who's working the task force with you?” she asked him.
“Dave Tarnovsky. Lisa Hughes. Fatima, in case there's a Middle East connection.”
But not Eric's wife. Caroline would be kept at bay, an unknown quantity. There was nothing wrong with Cuddy's team Tarnovsky was an ex-SEAL, an expert on explosives; Lisa Hughes had just completed her doctorate in Middle Eastern studies; and Fatima Bowen was a native Lebanese, one of the dark-skinned, silk-clad, black-haired women who served the CTC as a translator and general cultural referent. She'd married Mike Bowen twenty years earlier, during his last tour in Beirut. When he died in the 1983 car bomb attack on the U.S. embassy, Headquarters had given Fatima a job. Lebanese women with a thirst for revenge were to be prized above rubies.
“Sounds like Scottie is focusing on the Palestinians,” Caroline said neutrally.
“To buy time, I suppose?”
“To divert attention from Eric. Per Atwood's instructions.”
“That might work .. . until 30 April makes contact.”
“And won't we look like idiots if they do.” He glanced at her sidelong. “What was Eric really like in Budapest, Carrie?”
“You visited us in Nicosia,” she said tiredly. “Multiply that by ten. On good days, he was jumping out of his skin. On bad days, he was comatose.”
“Was he close?”
A sudden, sharp memory of Eric's hands roaming over her body. The Mediterranean heat, black olives and lemon. How long had it been since he had touched her?
“Close? Not to me. I suppose it makes sense that he walked away without a backward glance in the Frankfurt airport. I don't know what happened, Cuddy. How he managed to drift so far.”
“Not close to you,” he corrected impatiently. “To penetrating 30 April. Was he jumping out of his skin because of the danger? Or because he'd already turned on all of us?”
“I don't know.” Her throat was tightening despite her best efforts. “I just do not know, Cuddy. He stopped talking.”
“Even to you.” A flat statement.
She could not trust herself to reply.
