The Cutout

To fight him is useless; it'll only get me killed. There were four men she knew of perhaps more in the compound alone, men who were armed and ruthless. And then there's Jozsef... I can't leave Jozsef alone. But were all four of the other terrorists against her? What if Michael could be persuaded to help?

“The Serb cleansing of Kosovo was the attempt by one people to eradicate another,” Krucevic said, unperturbed, “and in my opinion, it was unforgivably crude.”

“I'm glad to hear it.”

Even with Michael's help if I can get Michael's help an escape won't put an end to Krucevic's plans. It's not enough to kill him and run. He has to be held accountable for the Brandenburg Gate. I owe Nell Forsyte that much.

“I am trained as a biologist, Mrs. Payne,” he confided with an air of frankness. “I tend to conceptualize in medical terms.”

“Really,” she replied noncommittally.

What is he talking about? And then she remembered the fear. The cold stink of anxiety, of fatal error, that she'd detected in him when her fever soared. Krucevic, the biologist, had been surprised by the recurrence. It had frightened him. Why? My survival is immaterial to him. So he must be afraid for his son.

She snatched at the thought, she hid it deep in a closet in her mind. She had found it. Krucevic's one vulnerability, Jozsef.

“If you discover that a cancer is multiplying in your body,” he went on, “if you see that the sickened cells are destroying the healthy ones, you have two choices. You can cut off the limb where the cancer feeds, and bury it deep in the ground. Or you can systemically poison the cells within and negate their ability to multiply.” He held up his hands like a successful magician. His own brilliance, the rabbit in his hat.

“With patience and subtlety, Mrs. Payne, the sick cells will die. The healthy will prevail. Your body will be cancer free.”

Mute, she stared at him. What he had just said was important, she knew. It was strategy, not just politics. He had told her exactly what he meant to do. He had handed her 30 April's operational agenda. But the sense of it eluded her, like a Rubik's Cube that failed to turn.

He reached his right hand to her cheek. Instinctively, she jerked away from him.

The hand slid down to her neck and gripped it cruelly. His other palm caressed her forehead.

“I am checking you for fever, Mrs. Payne.”

“I'm fine.” She was rigid under his hands. “Don't trouble yourself.”

“You lie. Already you feel less well than you did when our conversation began. In a little while, you will feel even worse. That is exactly as it should be.”

He rose and moved to the door. She followed him with her eyes. Was he bluffing? Or was her mind about to melt with fever?

“I want our friend Jack Bigelow to see the consequences of his ill-advised raid,” Krucevic told her. “A videotape, I think, is in order. We'll wait a few hours while the bacillus gains in strength.”

Four Berlin, 9:27 a.m.

Caroline spent forty-two minutes in the Palestinian safe house while the smoke of Saleh's Turkish cigarettes gradually clouded the room. She was puzzled by the fact of tobacco — wasn't it blasphemous for a follower of Islam to use it? — but Arab culture wasn't her strong suit. Maybe the prohibition centered on alcohol.

Or maybe a fellow dedicated to the jihad was immune from the restrictions applied to ordinary mortals. Regardless, the smoke was remarkably pungent. She would have to send her clothes to be cleaned before she checked out of the Hyatt.

If she made it back alive.

Saleh kept a curious sort of handgun on the table in front of him, with a free-floating barrel and an ergonomic handgrip. A Hammerli, Caroline guessed. It probably had electronic trigger action, variably weighted. Which meant it could fire if Saleh so much as grazed the table leg. A two-thousand-dollar gun in a world of five-hundred-dollar competition. The carpentry business had been very good to Mahmoud Sharif.

Saleh caught her assessing his piece. He held her gaze and did not blink. A garden — variety banker such as Jane Hathaway should look intimidated, Caroline thought — not as though she were calculating the speed of his draw. She folded her arms protectively across her chest and hunched slightly as she paced. No point in getting cocky.

She was expected at the Interior Ministry in less than an hour. When she failed to show up, Wally might be worried. Unless it was he who had tailed her from Alexanderplatz in the white Trabant.

What would Mahmoud Sharif do if he suspected she was not who she claimed? Was he likely to torture a woman? Or just shoot her in the back of the head and dump her body where no one would look for it?

Caroline glanced again at Saleh. He was studying her with unconcealed interest, eyes narrowed against the smoke.

The front door — the one she had supposed locked — swung back on silent hinges.

Akbar stood there, his face devoid of expression. He took a step back, deferential now.

The man who entered was taller than the others by a good foot and broad in the shoulder, with glittering black eyes and a clean shaven face. His nose was so sharply hooked it might almost have been a caricature, and an angry red scar bisected his right cheek — the trail of shrapnel, Caroline thought. He wore black jeans and black leather boots and a dress shirt of raw silk. He smelled, ever so faintly, of freshly sawn wood. She imagined his children, running to greet him at the end of the day and being lifted high on a cedar-scented shoulder. Wood chips in his hair. She looked instinctively at his hands.

Fine-boned, sensitive, adept at the manipulation of small parts. Had he constructed the device that brought down MedAir 901? Made floating candy wrappers of all those children high above the Adriatic?

“Miss Jane Hathaway,” he said, and inclined his head. “I am Mahmoud Sharif. You wished to speak to me.”

What was the protocol? Should she extend her hand? Would he take it if she did?

She nodded back at him instead.

“I appreciate your willingness to see me. I know you are a busy man.”

“For the cousin of my friend Michael I would do much,” Sharif said impassively, and gestured toward the sofa.

Caroline sat down. Sharif took one of the armchairs; Akbar, who still stood by the door, snapped his fingers. Saleh crushed out his cigarette and joined him. And that quickly, she was alone with Mahmoud Sharif and the gun his man had left on the table before her.

It occurred to Caroline that there were at least a thousand questions Scottie Sorensen would have liked Sharif to answer, but posing a single one of them would destroy the perilous balance of this meeting.

“Your false passport is excellent, Miss Hathaway, and the details that support it rather extraordinary.”

She cocked her head and studied him as though she could not quite follow his meaning.

“I particularly admired the pub receipts from Netting Hill Gate, and the British charwoman who answered the phone in what was supposed to be Hampstead,” he continued. “I studied in England many years ago; I could not have told your housekeeper from a native. But then, your organization has vast resources, does it not?”

Caroline frowned.

“I'm not sure I understand. Is there a problem with my passport?”

“None at all,” Sharif assured her with a gleam of amusement in his eyes. “And for that I commend you. A great number of such documents pass through my fingers, you understand, and rarely have I seen one so accomplished. Unless, perhaps, it was Michael's.”

He waited for her reaction.

“This is all very entertaining,” she said. “The blindfold, the gun on the table, the cool-your-heels-in-the- back-parior-whileI-run your-numbers treatment. But I have an appointment in less than an hour, Mr. Sharif, and I'd