The Cutout

away clean — free of Krucevic and Agency and Caroline alike.

It was a paradox she could not reconcile. She was Jane Hathaway, bona ride in a box; she was Caroline Carmichael, the baited wife. Her whiskey was gone. She tossed the bottle toward a wastepaper basket under the desk, and at that moment her telephone rang.

She froze. Eric. Talking in the dark. And Marinelli would have the hotel phone lines hugged.

She almost didn't answer. Then, as though it moved of itself, her hand grasped the receiver.

“Caroline,” he said.

“Scottie .. .” She felt a knife edge of relief — and disappointment.

“Did I wake you?”

“No” — she glanced at the clock — “its only eleven.”

“How's Buda?”

“Pretty hot. People aren't hurling themselves out of windows yet — but then, most of the windows are already smashed. The Volksturm arrive tomorrow.”

“Ah,” Scottie said with understanding. “Then we can put the Hungarian republic in the chancellor's column.”

So Scottie believed it, too. The Third Reich rising like a phoenix from half a century of ashes.

“What's next?”

“If I knew that, you'd be on a plane home. Caroline, you heard about our mess in Bratislava?”

“Yes. I'm sorry.” She kept her voice neutral, her words vague, in deference to the open phone line. There was a rustle across two continents as Scottie shuffled paper.

“It's not a complete loss. We traced a phone call to the Big Man himself. And the conversation was extremely interesting. His VaccuGen secretary had to tell him about a delivery that went awry.”

Delivery. Caroline pushed herself upright in bed. Had Krucevic planned to dump Sophie Payne?

“Somebody's prescription got into the wrong hands,” Scottie continued. “The Big Man was quite upset. We're crying to figure out why.”

“Was this medicine intended for our missing friend?” she asked.

“We don't think so. But she may not be doing too well. The specialists on this end are worried about her prognosis.”

Caroline's heart sank. Careful as Scottie might be, the message of his last words was unmistakable. Sophie Payne was dying.

“And the secretary? The one who made that call? Could you find her?”

“That's been tried. She's left work under something of a cloud. The Big Man was rather angry, to judge by his tone of voice. Surprised and rattled, even. As though a fly had devoured all the ointment.”

“I see. What do you want me to do, Scottie?”

“I may need you to fly to Poland. I'll call you tomorrow if it's necessary.”

“Poland?”

“Our friend Cuddy has spotted some activity there. In the accounts he's monitoring.”

VaccuGen's corporate accounts. He'd fired up DESIST and found a financial trail.

Caroline's heartbeat quickened.

“New money?”

“Lots of it. Cash is flooding into a certain German party organization — and from there to friends in Poland. We find that .. .”

“Ironic,” Caroline replied. “Given the state of coffers here.”

“Well, one market's bear can be another's bull,” he retorted lazily, as though he enjoyed this game of charades.

But Caroline was sick of it.

“You think our missing friend has gone to Poland, too?”

“Possibly. But she's running out of time.” His voice changed.

“Have you heard again from the fair-haired boy?”

“No. But I've changed cities. Even he might need some time to adjust.”

Which showed how poorly she'd judged Eric.

She had closed the drapes against the fading glow of the ruined Houses of Parliament and was almost asleep when the knock came on the door.

Shephard, she thought, and had the impulse to hide under the covers. There was something in the way he looked at her now that made her uneasy. The  LegAtt's eyes were too intense, too probing; somewhere in the air between Berlin and Buda, they had lost a professional distance. Perhaps, Caroline thought, it was because she reminded him of his dead wife. She preferred Shephard caustic and uncommunicative; it made him less threatening.

Another knock, louder this time.

She crossed the room and looked for a peephole. There was none. She slid the chain into the bolt and cracked the door four inches, peering out into the hallway.

Whatever she had intended to say died on her lips.

“For the love of God, get me inside before somebody sees me,” Eric muttered.

She pulled the chain hurriedly out of the bolt.

He slipped through the door and shut it behind him. He was wearing a white busboy's coat; the dining trolley he'd abandoned in the hall.

Employee entrance, she thought; and a kitchen computer listing all the guests, for room service.

“You shouldn't have come here. The station's all over the place.”

“How did I know you were going to say that?” he asked, and took her in his arms.

The shock of his hands moving over her in the darkness of that room was too much. Dead hands, she thought. How many lost nights in the last two and a half years had she cried for Eric's touch, for the solid span of his shoulders beneath her fingertips, the warmth of his face skimming hers? She allowed herself an instant of indulgence and breathed deep of his scent. He smelled of cigarettes and of sulfurous brown coal, of dead leaves and city rain; he smelled of human skin and human hair and the lingering hint of floral-scented soap. He smelled of Budapest and Nicosia and Tidewater, Virginia, of years and heartache and sex and longing. He smelled of life, a life lived without her; a band of pain tightened around her chest.

She had mourned the loss of his body as much as his soul — this body, strong and controlling, almost feral in the darkness. She shuddered and closed her eyes, feeling his hands on her rib cage, her shoulder, the lobe of her ear. His touch stung her skin with so much rippling life — and for an instant, she wanted to cry aloud with joy, she wanted to forget every unbearable moment of her days without him, she wanted to cradle his head and thank God that he was alive. It was what she had prayed for so uselessly during the long nights of grief: a life returned. A second chance. And her prayer had been answered.

But with what vicious reckoning.

This man was no miracle. He was a walking lie.

The rage of the past two years boiled hotly to the surface, so that her own mouth tore back at his, a savage thing that wanted to hurt him. Through the busboy's coat he wore she could feel the thud of his heart, too fast, and the tension in his body, as though he were coiled to spring. But then, Eric was always a predator. She gripped his arms tightly and thrust him away.

“Where is Sophie Payne?”

He was breathless, a diver mad for air.

“I can't tell you that. Not yet.”

If he refuses to give up the goods, Scottie muttered in her brain, shut him down, Caroline. Everything else is just crap.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“You're here,” he said baldly, and took a step toward her again.

“I'm here to find the Vice President. Your death made me an expert on 30 April, Eric.”

“Caroline — ”