“Nice town. But not my best work. It's a thankless job to replace Eric Carmichael. You can't replace him. You just show up and exit stage left as soon as possible.”
He was trying to make her feel good. The truth was, few people in the Agency could recruit or handle agents as effectively as Wally. He was everybody's hometown buddy the boy who'd never had a date to the prom, the one who held your hand late at night in a thousand seedy bars. With his worn wool suits and his graying goatee, Wally was genuine, Wally was sympathetic, Wally was a stand-up kind of guy; and before you knew it, Wally had slipped you some money and a contract and you were spilling your guts to the CIA.
“So I suppose they gave you Berlin as a way of easing you down gently, right? You're one step away from a Bronze Intelligence Star and a comfortable retirement in upstate New York.”
He grimaced at the windshield.
“I look plausible and I can bullshit up the wa zoo Carrie, but I'm not Eric. What he wouldn't do with this mess, huh? Wouldn't he be in his element right now? A rescue plan for the Vice President of the United States. The ultimate cowboy operation. Of course, if Eric had been around, the hit would've never happened. He'd have rolled up 30 April long ago.”
“Except that they rolled him up first,” Caroline said. And added Wally to the list of people Eric had betrayed.
He glanced at her.
“You any closer to pinning these guys for MedAir 901?”
“No. And that investigation is now on the back burner. Sophie Payne has to take precedence.”
“We'll get 'em,” Wally said positively. “We always do. Even if it takes ten years.”
Caroline had breathed, drunk, and slept MedAir 901 for the past thirty months.
Now the mere mention of the plane made her skin crawl. If the investigation continued if Cuddy Wilmot delved deeper into the truth, like a child picking at a scab what exactly would they learn? That Eric had deliberately killed two hundred and fifty-eight people in order to fake his own death? That as far back as the Frankfurt airport a farewell kiss in a crowded concourse she had not the slightest idea who her husband really was?
“There's something I have to ask you, Wally.”
“Yeah?”
“Eric's handling of the 30 April account. In Budapest. Before he died. You must have walked into a nightmare when you took over.”
“How so?” Wally swerved to avoid a jaywalker suddenly illuminated in the headlights, and cursed into the darkness. “From what I remember, Eric was pretty close to penetrating the organization. He had a recruit in Krucevic's inner circle. Or so I thought.”
“In Budapest?”
Wally wasn't trying to stonewall her. He was simply searching his memory for operational matters that belonged to another posting he'd left six months ago.
Then his eyelids flickered and he down shifted for a turn.
“That'd be DBTOXIN,” he said.
Caroline's breath nearly caught in her throat. A code name to attach to her untested source, a piece of the denied DO file. Wally was trusting her with operational Intelligence. She had better take it in stride.
“DBTOXIN?”
“The last fish Eric reeled in. A biologist in Buda. Trained with Krucevic at the university in Leipzig during the old Cold War days. They're pals from way back.”
“Think they're pals still?”
Wally considered.
“Maybe I should get on the horn to Buda and set up some tasking. See whether TOXIN knows where Krucevic is headed.”
“I sure as hell would.”
“Wonder if the guys still on the payroll.”
“So he wasn't blown when Eric died?”
“TOXIN? No way.” Wally glanced at her. “Is that what you've been thinking? That Eric's last recruit betrayed him? And that's why Krucevic blew up his plane? Disaster's not that personal, Carrie, even in this business.”
Time to change the subject.
“Speaking of personal,” she said, “hows Brenda?”
Brenda was Wally's wife. She was a California native, a vegetarian, and a massage therapist. He had met her during language training in Monterey. She was the last person anybody expected to fall in love with Wally, but the hometown — buddy routine had apparently worked. “Brenda left Berlin about a month ago, right after Voekl came to power. Her grandparents were Holocaust survivors, Caroline. She's not sticking around to see whether Fritz is sane.”
“He's never been overtly anti-Semitic, Wally.”
“No German politician can be and survive. Voekl says the right things. But the language is a sort of code, Caroline. Attack the outsider even if it's the Muslims this time and sooner or later, you'll catch up with the Jews.”
Caroline winced.
“Did she take your kids?”
He nodded, gaze fixed on the wet asphalt rippling in the headlights.
“The apartment's like a mausoleum.”
Brenda was important to Wally, but his two boys were his reasons to live.
“That must be tough,” Caroline said.
He shrugged.
“We call each other a lot. And my tour's up in eighteen months. Look, I'm starving. Why don't we grab something and head back to my place?”
“Something” turned out to be wurst from a kosher deli in the Scheunenviertel, the old Jewish quarter of Berlin where Wally had an apartment in a converted nineteenth-century town house. They ate brown bread, dense and nutty, and soft German cheese with the wurst. Wally drank dark beer. They sat on a faded velvet sofa in his high-ceilinged living room and talked of inconsequential things people they knew and hadn't seen in months, recipes for a true Hungarian gulyas, Brenda's practice in the Maryland suburbs. And when the insistent edge of Caroline's hunger had been muted, she wiped her fingers on a paper napkin and sat back to enjoy Wally's wine.
“So do you sweep this place?” she asked, casting her eyes up to the ceiling.
“Every day, with the best possible broom,” he replied. “It's clean. As far as I can tell.”
“No coincidences?”
“None that are more than coincidences. You can talk, Mad Dog.”
“Where do I start, Wally?”
He held her gaze impassively.
“First, tell me why you're here.”
Her pulse throbbed. Don't look like you've got something to hide, she thought.
Wally always knows. Wally was born a spy. She forced a rueful smile. “I'm here because Jack Bigelow is desperate and I happened to write a bio he actually read. The President seems to think a mere analyst can pull Sophie Payne out of a hat. I can't begin to tell you what I'm expected to do. I don't know myself.”
“Then I propose you sit back and watch Tom Shephard.”
“The LegAtt?”
“He's in charge on the ground. You monitor his moves and wait for information. That seems to be what analysts are most comfortable with. Watching and waiting.”
Caroline's smile deepened.
“How you cowboys despise us!”
“Not me,” Wally protested. “I've got nothing but respect for the Headquarters won ks It's just not who I am. I need… to make decisions faster. I need to act. Even if what I do turns out to be wrong. You analysts demand so much certainty, you know? Before you're willing to move off a dime.”
