“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 Mian Krucevic that Dare had offered him earlier. He had scrawled at the bottom,
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 – guy.”
“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 conics 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 progress 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 rah 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.
“I'd have come anyway, if only to hold Cuddy's hand. What sort of contact?”
“They dropped a video and the Vice President's clothes at Embassy Prague.”
“Payne is on the video?”
“I'm afraid so.”
Caroline's eyes narrowed.
“She's not ”
“Not dead.” Dare twisted the topaz on her finger. “By now, with any luck, she might even be resting comfortably. But if she's left for long in 30 April's hands, I wouldn't vouch for her chances.”
Caroline nodded, her lips compressed.
“I'd hoped her status would shield her.”
“Status didn't do much for Gerhard Schroeder.” Dare, too, had seen photographs of the Socialist chancellors blasted limo. The mortar that had killed Schroeder was triggered when the car crossed an infrared beam. No smoking gun, no fingerprints, only a crater where a man had once been.
“What I heard today convinced me that Mrs. Payne is in extreme peril,” Dare said. “Which makes me question whether 30 April has any intention of returning her at all.”
The implication hung in the air between them.
Caroline took a deep breath, a swimmer about to plunge.
“Did you see... Eric?”
“No. It was impossible to see anyone. Krucevic was never visible on camera just a voice. The rest of them, maybe three or four men, wore hoods. Krucevic referred to a few by name. Otto, I think ”
“Weber,” Caroline said automatically.
“Did he call anyone Michael? Cuddy thinks it's possible Eric is still using his Agency alias. He found something in desist.”
Dare shook her head.
“But there was a boy. Jozsef. Krucevic claimed he was his son.”
She watched Caroline consider this fact like a cut stone under a spotlight.
“And he offered the kid up to the world of television? I wonder why. He kidnapped Jozsef, you know, from his mother. If we could find her “ She stood and began to turn restlessly before the DCI's desk.
“We could use her,” Dare concluded quietly. “You think like a case officer.”
Caroline laughed.
