Francine Mathews - The Cutout

“Answers to a lot of questions would be just fine. Or a shoulder to cry on.”

“Why don't you call Hank?”

“Hank's shoulders are a little too well tailored for tears. Besides, I haven't talked to him in nearly a year.”

“Then I'd say it's high time.”

“He never liked Eric, Cud. And what could I tell him? It's all a close hold anyway.”

Hank. His silver-haired profile rose in Caroline's mind, shimmered there like the outline of a perfect knight, an old-world cavalier. The acute gaze, the measured speech. Hank never swerved from the path of reason. He'd taught her everything she knew, and most of what she'd forgotten.

“The DCI would advise me not to talk to my lawyer,” she added. “Even one in my family.”

“Not all Hank's counsel is professional.”

Caroline shrugged in discomfort, and Cuddy dropped the subject. They stared at each other for a few seconds in silence, uncertain what to say. Every topic seemed forbidden.

“Feeling betrayed?” Caroline asked finally.

“Feeling stupid,” Cuddy replied.

“Sometimes they're the same thing.”

“Scottie's asked me to head up the Berlin Task Force. I got the impression I had no choice.”

“This is where I say, “That's why they pay you the big bucks.” Right?”

“Not if you want to survive.” His eyes were unreadable. “I've had just about as much as I can take, Carrie. I've spent thirty months investigating a crash that didn't kill my best friend, and I've just been told by the DCI herself to suppress information critical to the recovery of the Vice President. I don't know why I'm still here.”

“Maybe,” she suggested, “because you think you can fix it. Big mistake. Cud.”

He laughed harshly and looked away.

She felt a sudden rush of sympathy for the man. He was a good person, a faultlessly honest person, who didn't deserve this kind of painful ambiguity.

Never mind that ambiguity was the human condition: Cuddy lived in a happy mess of absolutes. He refused to eat meat, but his fingertips were permanently stained with nicotine. He stood in the rain-filled doorways at the end of the Agency's corridors ten times a day, burning his death ration and hoping to save his lungs later with a three-mile run. He fought the last good fight in the U.S. government tracking terrorists but believed Amnesty International was a front for Communist insurgency. He spoke five languages, all of them well, which was something that most people did not know. Cuddy never advertised.

Each morning, he drove down the Maryland side of the Potomac while Caroline drove up the Virginia. He wore jeans and carried his work clothes in a backpack.

He parked his car on Canal Road and canoed across the Potomac to the Agency's foot. Those last few moments, Caroline thought Cuddy gliding alone through an arrowhead of water were all he could really claim of his day.

“Who's working the task force with you?” she asked him.

“Dave Tarnovsky. Lisa Hughes. Fatima, in case there's a Middle East connection.”

But not Eric's wife. Caroline would be kept at bay, an unknown quantity. There was nothing wrong with Cuddy's team Tarnovsky was an ex-SEAL, an expert on explosives; Lisa Hughes had just completed her doctorate in Middle Eastern studies; and Fatima Bowen was a native Lebanese, one of the dark-skinned, silk-clad, black-haired women who served the CTC as a translator and general cultural referent. She'd married Mike Bowen twenty years earlier, during his last tour in Beirut. When he died in the 1983 car bomb attack on the U.S. embassy, Headquarters had given Fatima a job. Lebanese women with a thirst for revenge were to be prized above rubies.

“Sounds like Scottie is focusing on the Palestinians,” Caroline said neutrally.

“To buy time, I suppose?”

“To divert attention from Eric. Per Atwood's instructions.”

“That might work .. . until 30 April makes contact.”

“And won't we look like idiots if they do.” He glanced at her sidelong. “What was Eric really like in Budapest, Carrie?”

“You visited us in Nicosia,” she said tiredly. “Multiply that by ten. On good days, he was jumping out of his skin. On bad days, he was comatose.”

“Was he close?”

A sudden, sharp memory of Eric's hands roaming over her body. The Mediterranean heat, black olives and lemon. How long had it been since he had touched her?

“Close? Not to me. I suppose it makes sense that he walked away without a backward glance in the Frankfurt airport. I don't know what happened, Cuddy. How he managed to drift so far.”

“Not close to you,” he corrected impatiently. “To penetrating 30 April. Was he jumping out of his skin because of the danger? Or because he'd already turned on all of us?”

“I don't know.” Her throat was tightening despite her best efforts. “I just do not know, Cuddy. He stopped talking.”

“Even to you.” A flat statement.

What kind of wife were you, anyway?

She could not trust herself to reply.

“That's strange,” he muttered.

“Even the polygraphers recognize a case officer's right to pillow talk. They've practically canonized it.”

Pillow talk. From a man who had walked the streets at night, while she tossed alone and restless? Cuddy , Caroline thought, would make a damn good polygrapher himself. He had a genius for posing the brutal question.

“Maybe he wanted to protect me “ She bit off the words. A more credulous woman could go on believing that Eric was protecting her that the whole elaborate lie of the past thirty months had been designed to shield her from terror. But Caroline refused to be credulous any longer. The credulous impaled themselves on swords of their own making.

“Scottie tells me Atwood wants you polygraphed”

She laughed at the abrupt change of subject.

“I suppose it's inevitable. She has to know whether I'm telling the truth about believing Eric was dead. Lets hope the polygraphers keep their questions confined to MedAir 901.”

“I think we can assume they will. Atwood is unlikely to share the fact of Eric's existence with Security. Just keep your mind on the plane crash and forget about Sophie Payne. You'll be fine.”

“Scottie likes to add a column of numbers when he's hooked up to the machine.” Caroline spoke with an effort at lightheartedness she was far from feeling. “He swears it keeps him from reacting to the questions. But I'm lousy at math.”

“Then try spelling. Anything is preferable to nerves. Nerves can look like guilt to the box, and guilt might register as deception.”

“Thanks. You've no idea how comforting that is.”

He studied her, then said, “I wish I could go with you.”

“But some things, as my grandma told me during potty training, we are forced to do alone.” Caroline undipped the clandestine report from Krucevic's file and slid it across the desk.

“Take a look at this, Cuddy. There's a DO asset who's close to 30 April.”

“Hungarian desk.” Cuddy nipped to the second page, brows knit, instantly absorbed. “This guy could be in Buda. Hell, by this time Sophie Payne could be in Buda.”

“Exactly. We've got to send out a tasking cable.”

“And how do we phrase that cable, Carrie?”

“Hey, guys, the official Task Force line is that the Palestinians are responsible for the Berlin bombing, but chat up your 30 April asset and ask whether he's ever heard of Sophie Payne'?”

Caroline frowned.

“I've read weirder tasking cables, thank you very much. Case officers are used to working blind. And with the Veep snatched, Scottie will have every terrorist expert the Agency owns sniffing the ground — the reports will come flooding in. This is a lead, Cuddy—”