The Cutout

The look of a cornered animal.

Two Georgetown, 4:13 a.m.

Dare Atwood was dreaming of trees: spectral branches writhing like the architraves of a cathedral when one stares at them too long, neck craned backward, the self diminished by an inhuman height. The light under the leaves was cathedral-like, too; dim as clouded glass, smothered with incense. She began to walk through the tunnel of tangled limbs, but the branches were keening, they screamed for sunlight and air. She had never known a tree could grieve — and with her knowledge came an unreasoning fear, so that she turned abruptly in her sleep and repressed a whimper. She must run, must find the road again and the car she had abandoned — but the trees had closed and shut off her path.

I need an ax, she thought, and looked down at her hands. All she held was her Waterman pen.

The shrill cry of a bird in her ear — primeval, ravenous. She jumped, and the trees shattered as though they were painted on glass. The phone was ringing.

The phone.

She struggled upward, heaved back the bedclothes, and groped into the darkness for her secure line.

“Dare Atwood.”

“Director,” came the apologetic voice in her ear, more cordial than primeval birds.

“I'm sorry to disturb you.” It was like Scottie Sorensen to sound collected and urbane at 4:13 a.m. The wee small hours were Scottie's native element; it was the time when hunting was best.

“We've just heard from the CDC — and you had asked to be called.”

“Go ahead,” Dare said tersely. The CDC was the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. The hypodermic dropped with Sophie Payne's clothing on the steps of the Prague embassy had been flown there by jet for analysis. Dick Estridge — a twenty-three-year veteran of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology, an authority on chemical and biological weapons — had been dispatched to meet the plane. Presumably he and a CDC epidemiologist had worked for most of the night.

“It looks, walks, and talks like anthrax,” Scottie told her.

“So Krucevic wasn't bluffing.”

“No. If this is really the needle that inoculated the Vice President.”

“That's an assumption we have to make.” Dare considered the point, as she had considered it a thousand times since Payne's abduction. The needle and its contents represented a worst-case scenario. If they were merely a bluff, so much the better. If they weren't, then the President and the Agency should be prepared.

“Or don't you agree?” she asked Scottie. “Does the CDC think the needle is a fake?”

“No. From what Estridge tells me, the anthrax bacillus is particularly hardy. It can survive exposure to sunlight for days, and it can live in soil and water for years. The trip to Atlanta in a used hypodermic was nothing. And then there's the blood.”

“Blood,” Dare repeated.

“The President authorized transmittal of Mrs. Payne's medical records from Bethesda Naval to the CDC. Her blood type matches residue found in the hypodermic.”

He was holding something back, Dare knew. Offering her the security of facts before venturing into the unknown.

“What else, Scottie?”

“It's the fact of the hypodermic that has these people concerned. Apparently anthrax is an airborne infection. It's a germ we inhale. Or a spore, as Estridge calls it. It invades the lungs and causes symptoms similar to a chest cold, followed by respiratory shock and death. But Krucevic injected his bug directly into the Veep's bloodstream.”

“Go on,” Dare said.

“So the infection is systemic.”

She frowned into the darkness.

“But he also injected her with an antidote. Or so we hope. That would be systemic, too — wouldn't it?”

“Yes and no. The normal treatment of an unvaccinated patient exposed to anthrax inhalation is a four-week cycle of antibiotics, along with a three-part program of follow-up vaccination. It's damned persistent in the human body. Krucevic claimed that this particular bug is about ten times as virulent. He also claimed to have an effective antibiotic. Something specific to his engineered anthrax strain. But the CDC is highly skeptical. If Krucevic can knock out that deadly a bacillus in one shot, they say, then he's making medical history. They'd like to meet the guy.”

Dare's heart sank.

“They think she's still sick.”

“They think she's going to die in a matter of days,” Scottie said.

“Can we save her? If we get to her soon?”

It was an unfair question, Dare knew — one Scottie could never answer. He avoided it with predictable grace.

“What worries the CDC is the bacillus's tendency to cause ulcers. There's a form of anthrax infection common to livestock workers — they get it from infected sheep — that leaves open sores on the hands and arms. Estridge says the CDC is afraid that a blood-borne infection like Mrs. Payne's could result in secondary ulceration of her major organs. Heart, liver, the lining of the stomach, you name it.. ..”

Dare winced.

“She could be bleeding inside.”

“And completely shut down over the next forty-eight hours. The woman should be in an intensive-care unit.”

“But surely Krucevic would have considered that. He's a biologist himself.”

“Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he never intended for Sophie Payne to survive.”

“But he injected his own son with the stuff!”

“He said that he did,” Scottie cautioned. “But what do we really know, Director?”

“Nothing,” she retorted, “and we don't have to know. All we have to do is assume. We have to project every possible scenario for the Vice President; we have to be prepared to offer solutions. That's why we exist, remember?”

Scottie was silent.

“Get somebody at the CDC working on this bug,” Dare ordered, “because when the Vice President comes home and I mean when, Scottie she'll need a treatment regimen already in place.”

“Got it,” he replied, and hung up.

Dare pressed her hands against her eyes and considered making coffee. Something about trees and an ax fluttered on the edge of her consciousness. She brushed it aside and called the President.

Three The Night Sky, 3:47 a.m.

Caroline Carmichael is soaring across the Atlantic at thirty-nine thousand feet, an arrow shot straight at the heart of Central Europe; but in her fitful dreams, she crouches low in her grandfather's dew-drenched furrows and waits, tensed, for pursuit.

The smell of damp Salinas earth rises from the morning fields and mingles with the dense musk of artichoke leaves, with the flare of garlic flowers from across three hectares, with creosote and diesel fumes from the black ribbon of highway.

It is August 7, 1969, and she is exactly five years old. Her father has been gone for most of her life, gone