The Cutout

fine plate-glass windows. And in a barren hall set aside for the purpose — a school cafeteria or a deserted beer garden — they would pick at the sleeves of the victims' coats with exacting and callous tweezers.

In about eight hours' time they would swing into action, Caroline thought, without pausing for sleep or acknowledging jet lag. They would jostle for position with the local police, yell louder in English when they misplaced their translators, and somehow, in the middle of the devastated square, produce a forensic miracle. Forgetting, if they had ever known, that the Brandenburg Gate had once been beautiful.

She nursed her gin and tonic in the V.I.P lounge, one of the offhand perks of crisis travel, her eyes fixed on a rerun of Friends. She had already presented her handgun — a Walther TPH-to airport security, along with the multiple forms required for international clearance. Her photograph, along with her seat assignment, was now posted in the cockpit of the plane, and every member of the flight crew was aware that Caroline Carmichael carried a gun. She imagined she was not alone in this; among the various Bureau personnel represented on the Berlin flight, a handful must be armed. But it was unusual for an Agency analyst. Most employees of the CIA never carried a gun. Dare had generously offered a duplicate set of weapons clearance forms made out in the name of Jane Hathaway — her back stopped alias — but Caroline had refused. Jane was supposed to be a banker living in London. She would never pack a Walther in her Kate Spade purse.

She took another sip of gin. The butterflies were starting to hum and sing in the pit of her stomach. Takeoff was the worst. Takeoff was a shove from a forty-foot platform, the harness in free fall around your waist; takeoff was acceleration without a brake mechanism at hand.

A metaphor for the process of explosion.

She should have told the psychiatrist about her fear of flying. He might have found her ramblings illustrative. But she had been in no mood to illustrate much for Dr. Agnelli this afternoon.

“Let's talk about the period before the crash, Mrs. Carmichael. How much did you know about your husband's past?”

“His past? You mean, like … his childhood?”

“If you will. Parents, friends, early influences. That sort of thing.”

“The man's dead, Doctor. The question of influence is rather moot, wouldn't you agree?”

Had Dare ordered this session in a comfortable chair, the lighting as dim as a bordello's? She must have. An assessment of Caroline's sanity, once her ignorance had been proved by the box with wires. And how much, exactly, did Agnelli know about Eric? The psychiatrist seemed like a gentle man, persuasive, his face scarred indelibly by acne. He held a pen suspended between the tips of his index fingers and stared at her in a fashion that was not unkind. She mistrusted him implicitly.

“My husband rarely talked about his childhood. Doctor. It was not a happy time.”

“Really. Did he ever say why?” A buff-colored file lay closed on his right knee. Hers? Or Eric's? In either case, Agnelli possessed more information than he intended to admit. She had worked with psychiatrists before. She recognized the method. He would not influence her testimony; he would prefer that she indict Eric herself. But to what end? How much had he been told?

She shifted in the chair, tweed upholstery sticking testily to her stockings.

“I'm sure you've seen his personnel file.”

“Mmmm.” Noncommittal.

“He was a foster child,” she elaborated.

“You must know that.”

“I see. And his foster parents were .. . less than ideal?”

“Much less.” She attempted neutrality, as though she were conducting a high-level briefing. Nothing in her voice of the violence that had shaped him.

“The father was eventually imprisoned on a charge of manslaughter, I understand.”

“Yes” Agnelli waited, eyes steady. Caroline stared back. If he knew about the prison time, he knew what it was for.

“And did that .. . episode .. . affect your husband, Mrs. Carmichael?”

“It must have. In some way.” She folded her arms over her chest. “What exactly are you looking for, Doctor? My husband's been gone for years.”

Gone. The word she would use henceforth, conveniently inexact. On the television screen, Monica and her brother were arguing about breast size.

Commercials interceded. Caroline finished her gin and tonic. And then, suddenly, Jack Bigelow's face filled the screen.

“We have confirmed beyond a doubt that terrorists abducted Vice President Sophie Payne from the site of the Berlin bombing this morning.” Bigelow's suit jacket was on, the bags under his eyes accentuated by the press room's glare of lights.

He looked cold and rather deadly, Caroline thought. As though the scripted lines were processed by one part of his brain, while the other the more calculating had Sophie Payne's captors pinned against the wall. She wondered if, somewhere, Eric was watching.

“Everything that can be done to locate the Vice President will be done,” Bigelow continued, “and her kidnappers will be punished to the full extent of the law. But the United States will never be held hostage to the goals or threats of a band of thugs, regardless of the cost. Mrs. Payne knows that. When she consented to serve this country, she accepted that burden of sacrifice. Our hearts and thoughts are with you, Sophie.”

In the split second of silence that fell between the Presidents final word and the storm of questions hurled at him from the assembled reporters, Caroline distinctly saw his fingers tremble. It was a slight movement that came as he gripped the sides of his podium and focused on the TelePrompTer, but it was betrayal of something, all the same. Fear? The rush of crisis? Or simple exhaustion?

Agnelli would have loved it.

“Gone, but hardly forgotten,” the psychiatrist had said this afternoon. “It must have been extremely difficult for you to come to terms with your husband's... loss.”

“I'm not sure that I really have,” Caroline had replied, with the suggestion of frankness. “But you know the old saying, Doctor. “Those who live by the sword die by the sword.” Eric understood that Intelligence work posed some risks.”

“You were married .. . how long?”

“Ten years.” Here she was on safer ground. “Is that what this is all about? My grief? How well I'll handle another terrorist bombing?”

Agnelli thumbed the manila file balanced on his knee.

“It says here that Eric knew the man his father killed. Clarence Jackson.” Back to that. The interest in her a blind.

“He was a history teacher at Eric's high school.”

“A teacher. I see.” The pen was slipped into a breast pocket, the fingertips steepled. Agnelli was warming to his subject. “Would you describe Mr. Jackson as a mentor?”

Caroline shrugged.

“I don't know whether Eric would have used that word or not. He liked the guy.”

“And yet his father murdered him.”

“Foster father, Doctor. Eric never knew his own.”

The psychiatrist twitched impatiently, as though her objection were trivial.

“Clarence Jackson was of African-American extraction?”

Caroline gazed at him wearily.

“You're the one with the file.”

“Killed in what amounted to a mob lynching?”

“It was 1972 in South Boston, Doctor. The level of violence was rather high.”

“Mmmm.” He glanced down at his neat pages, no longer feigning indifference. Who had put him on to this?

“I see that your husband was also sentenced in juvenile court, Mrs. Carmichael, and spent several months in a detention center.”

“For vandalism. Not murder.”

“That sort of thing is probably a prerequisite for the Green Berets.” He smiled thinly.