streets: Esterhazy to the fore, his deputies flanking each side, none of them requiring direction or even much speech. They had parked the dark blue sedan two blocks above the art gallery on Gorog Utca and crossed to the far sidewalk. None of them carried an umbrella.
Esterhazy mounted the narrow staircase first. Lindros drew his gun and came behind. Berg looked for a second exit to the street, found none, then posted himself at the foot of the stairs. It was quiet enough in the apartment above that when Esterhazy kicked open the door, the sound exploded in the passage and brought Berg around with his gun raised.
The door was unlocked.
It bounced hard against the interior wall and slammed shut in Esterhazy's face before he had a chance to slide through the opening. But not before he glimpsed what lay within.
The body of a woman, sprawled on the floor. Her face was a mask of blood.
Lindros was already beside him, pallid-faced but silent. Esterhazy clutched the doorknob, raised his gun in his other hand, and slid quietly into the room.
Lindros followed.
The apartment was cold and raw, a gusting draft pouring in through the ceiling.
He looked up and saw the skylight open. There was a chair overturned like a second body near the woman's corpse. She had been trying to escape through the roof when her killer caught up with her. Esterhazy's gaze slid away from the ruin of her face.
He made his way along the living-room wall to the bedroom doorway, then swung inside with gun raised.
No one was waiting for him.
His heartbeat thudded in his ears. He searched quickly under the bed. Behind the closet door. Through the bathroom.
No one.
Lindros was crouched at the woman's side, checking for a pulse. Esterhazy could have told him not to bother. He pulled a photograph from his breast pocket — the candid shot of Mirjana Tarcic that Tom Shephard had given him four hours earlier.
“Mirjana Tarcic?”
Lindros shrugged.
“Who knows?”
Her face had been crushed to a pulp with something heavy — a crowbar, a vicious boot. Fragments of the woman's skull and teeth were scattered about the wide-plank floors. The bright red rugs were clotted with blood. And the rain had dripped steadily through the open skylight, washing the gore across the room toward the galley kitchen — she must have been killed hours before. In the morning, when they still hadn't known enough to look for her.
Lindros pointed to the corpse's neck.
“Look at that, boss.”
A silk scarf was tightened like a tourniquet around her windpipe, crimson with blood. Esterhazy looked at Shephard's photograph once more. Mirjana Tarcic wore a white silk scarf.
“Boss!” yelled Berg from the foot of the steps.
“There's an old lady down here, says she lives up above! You want to see her?”
The mother. Bassza me.
Esterhazy's stomach heaved. He ducked back into the bathroom without a word.
Tom Shephard could not have reached Marinelli before the red eye blinked, before the laser beam he could not see was intersected and the explosive circuit completed. But he ran anyway, his mouth open in a yell against the stupidity of all cowboys, the bravado of SEALs, toward the Medici prince outlined for an instant against the mouth of hell.
Nine
Budapest, 6 p.m.
Embassy Budapest officially closed for business at five p.m., but no U.S. installation in a rioting city, with a hostage Vice President and a rescue mission in progress, simply shuts its doors and sends its people home. Caroline had company in the station vault: Vie Marinelli's secretary, an efficient woman in her forties named Teddy, who scrupulously organized files while waiting for news. Teddy was slim and stylish in her long, narrow skirt; she shifted paper with quick hands that never mistook their purpose. Caroline would have been grateful for a distraction — she was tense and apprehensive — but Teddy seemed disinclined to talk.
In her mind, Eric walked slowly away down a rain-washed street.
She pushed him aside with difficulty, pulled up a chair to a computer terminal, and began composing a cable for Dare Atwood.
C/CTC meant “Chief, Counterterrorism Center.” Dare would know immediately what Scottie Sorensen had done, from the moment of MedAir 901's explosion; Dare was a High Priestess of Reason, too. She would unravel the knots taster than Scottie could tie them.
Caroline retrieved Eric's disk from her coat pocket. Downloading foreign data onto a secure Agency computer was technically forbidden; the fear of electronic virus transmission was too great. Caroline suppressed a qualm and pulled up the disk's file list. She began systematically copying it into the DCI's cable.
A phone pierced the station's stillness. Teddy cut it off on the first ring.
“Caroline? Could you go down to Reception and talk to a guy from the federal police? He asked for Shephard or Marinelli, but I said they were unavailable.”
Mirjana. She stood up, her pulse accelerating, and hit the computer's screen saver.
“Please don't secure the vault, Teddy. I'm still cabling Headquarters.”
The visitor, a broad-shouldered, stocky man in a rumpled wool suit, was pacing by the time she got to the marine guard.
“Caroline Carmichael,” she said. “How may I help you?”
He shook her hand mechanically, but his face remained guarded.
“Where is Shephard?” he asked in halting English.
“We expect him momentarily. I work with Mr. Shephard. I'm happy to relay any message — ”
“You are FBI?”
“Department of State,” Caroline said smoothly. “Temporary duty from Washington. And you are — ?”
“Esterhazy.” He flipped open a badge; she studied it briefly.
“Shephard brought you a photograph this morning.”
His eyes widened slightly. He nodded.
A few chairs were ranged against one wall of the reception area; Caroline turned, and Esterhazy followed her. They sat down fifteen feet from the impassive marine guard.
“Tell Shephard the woman is dead,” Esterhazy said softly.
“Mirjana Tarcic? Murdered?”
