“Jane sends her love. She will be at the Budapest Hilton if you want her, Michael, but I advise you to take extreme care. Once these women get their claws into you, it is as much as your life is worth to break free. Look at me! Go with God, brother.”
And then he broke the connection. Fred tossed a slip of paper at Wally.
“The number's in Budapest. Registered to the name of Tarcic. Is that Hungarian?”
“No,” Caroline said numbly, “it's Serbian.”
“Tarcic,” Wally repeated.
“Isn't that — ”
“The name of Krucevic's ex-wife? Yes.”
“I thought those two hated each other. Why would Sharif use a contact number manned by Mirjana Tarcic?”
In a blaze of hope and disbelief, Caroline suddenly understood. Because Mirjana's not working for Mian Krucevic. She's working against him. For Eric.
“There could be a hundred different women in Budapest with that name, Wally,” she said carefully. “It may have nothing to do with the ex-wife.”
“Oh, right.” He rolled his eyes.
But even she didn't believe it. Of course the two women were the same. Forget the years of loss, the unspeakable betrayal, the pain and the anger; Caroline knew how Eric's mind worked. He was adept at manipulation. He instantly sensed weakness and turned it to advantage. If Caroline had seen the possibilities of Mirjana Tarcic — how the woman could be used, targeted against her husband — it was obvious that Eric would be ten steps and at least two years ahead of her.
“Maybe the breakup is false,” Wally muttered. “A cover operation for something else.”
“That might explain why she let Krucevic take the kid,” suggested Tom Shephard. “Because she's been seeing him all along.”
“Fred,” Wally said, “get Budapest on the line. We need to find this woman now”
A bubble of panic rose in Caroline's chest. The net is tightening. Find Mirjana and you find Eric. But most important, you might find Vice President Payne — and that was the job she had been sent out to do. No choice, no possible way to save them both. Her throat was throttled with unspoken words. She had laid the trap, and he was walking into it.
“Who the hell is Jane Hathaway?” Shephard asked. “Sharifs contact with Krucevic? Is Krucevic using the name Michael?”
“The names don't mean anything.” Wally was impatient. “Sharif just worked them into the message. I'd say the point of the call was the Budapest Hilton.”
He took the phone Fred Leicester offered. “Vie? How're things on the ground? .. . That bad? It's what you signed up for. Listen I've got a number you need to trace. The woman's a suspect in the Payne kidnapping. And put a team on the Hilton, okay? We think it's where 30 April is meeting”
It was out of Caroline's hands now. The Budapest station would run with the recorded number. They would find Mirjana Tarcic's house. They would have Tarcic arrested on a trumped-up charge, a favor from the Hungarian police or surveil her in the belief she could lead them to Krucevic. And they would certainly find Eric. Unless Caroline got there first. Did she want to? Did she want to learn the whole truth about her marriage the lies, the gross deceptions, the misplaced trust?
Wally cradled the receiver.
“Marinelli's signaled a meeting with DBTOXIN for the morning. News of the Hungarian bank crash has hit the street, Carrie. People are rioting.”
She had no choice but to go forward, whatever she would find.
“Wally, is there a night train to Budapest?”
“Its a sixteen-hour trip.” He regarded her grimly. “Take a plane, Carrie, and stay at the Hilton. The President will spring for it.”
Ten
Pristina, 4:30 p.m.
The children had been waiting patiently in line for seven hours now, ever since the German medical teams had arrived on the ground in Kosovo and set up their assembly-line vaccination. The trail of parents and toddlers snaked through the main street of the squatters' village, several thousand strong, and it moved with surprising efficiency. The young men and women — medical students, many of them, and all volunteers — had thrown themselves into the task. And while the children in the quarantined squatters' camp were vaccinated, another team had set up shop elsewhere in the city of Pristina. Fear of the spreading epidemic had knifed through the entire province of Kosovo.
Simone Amiot had not yet had a chance to speak to many of the German volunteers — the numbers of sick and dying exceeded a thousand now, and all her time was spent in the medical tent. She managed to snatch two or three hours of sleep each day. Never enough. She found herself nodding off in the midst of examinations; she moved through fatigue as though it were deep, deep water, and waited for some tide to turn. For the epidemic to peak, for the numbers to recede. Perhaps the vaccines would make a difference.
“They seem to know what they're doing.” Stefan Marx was peering through the tent flap next to her. He was the head of their volunteer group, a veteran of Doctors Without Borders. A kind man who had left a thriving medical practice in Stuttgart to spend his time in the hellholes of the world.
“Now, if only we knew what they were pumping into those kids' veins.”
Simone looked up at him swiftly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that this vaccine can't possibly have gone through clinical trials. I only hope to God it's not worse than the disease. But I ask you — ” He gazed angrily around the crowded tent, the faces of the suffering children.
“Do we have a choice?”
Enver Gordievic apparently thought so.
Throughout the day, Simone had looked for him among the waiting parents. She had hoped against hope that he would be there, with little Krystle on his shoulder.
Because she dreaded the moment when she might look up and find him standing in the 0 1 0 medical tent with another feverish child. Simone had learned from bitter experience that only one in twenty children survived this disease.
Stefan Marx laid his hand on her shoulder and smiled into her careworn face.
“You should take a break,” he said.
She opened her mouth to protest, to insist that she was just fine — but he'd already gone to help a nurse lift a boy from a pallet on the floor. Simone pulled on her jacket and stepped out into the early twilight of late fall. The medical teams would vaccinate under spotlights if they had to. No one wanted to turn these people away.
She hesitated, uncertain which direction to take — then found herself striding toward Enver's shelter. She had not seen him since his daughters body had been carried from the medical tent for burial.
The small, crazily canted shack was silent as she approached. Simone stepped up to the door and knocked tentatively. And the flat panel of wood swung open under her hand.
At first she could pick nothing out of the shadows. Then her eyes adjusted, and Krystle's fair baby hair gleamed in the last bit of daylight. The child was lying on the floor, hands flung wide like a snow angel's. Enver's arms were around her. They might almost have been asleep. Then Simone saw the neat round bullet holes in each of their temples and the pool of blood shining wickedly on the floor. She saw the pistol lying spent where Enver's hand had dropped it. He had found a third way, then a path between sickness and untested vaccines. He had taken his girl home to her mother.
“Enver,” Simone whispered. And her voice broke on his name.
