Francine Mathews - The Cutout

The camera lens retreated several feet, took in the gurney and Sophie's shackled body.

“Do you know, Mrs. Payne, why you are here?”

“Because you murdered my bodyguard and kidnapped me,” Sophie said without hesitation.

“You are here as a token of faith,” Krucevic amended patiently. “Of faith and commitment on both our parts to an enlightened course of action. Have we harmed you, Mrs. Payne?”

“No. You've terrorized and humiliated me. But it takes a great deal more than that to harm me, Krucevic.”

He had walked around the perimeter of the room until he could see her face, although he remained carefully off camera. His arms were folded across his chest, his dark eyes fixed on her own.

“I'm afraid it does,” he said. “Otto? The hypodermic, please.”

Sophie flinched involuntarily as the man approached. His face was now concealed behind a black hood, but his eyes were unmistakable dull with malice and anticipation. In his right hand he held a needle. She jerked convulsively in her bonds.

“It is to Jack Bigelow that I am speaking now,” she heard Krucevic say. “I hope I may call you Jack, Mr. President. I am about to conduct a demonstration. I know you will watch very carefully.”

He nodded. With a sudden, sharp movement Otto plunged the hypodermic into Sophie's thigh. She cried out at the shock of it, the gratuitous pain; behind his mask, Otto smiled. Eight people were assembled in the White House secure video tele-conferencing center, or VTC — a smallish space with an oblong table, twelve chairs, a wide-screen monitor, and a million-dollar array of telecommunications equipment.

With its vaulted door and security panel, the room resembled a steel diving chamber; it might almost survive ground zero. Like all secure facilities, it was Tempest-tested: Any electronic or magnetic signals emanating from the space could be neither intercepted nor recorded by an outside party. There was a secure VTC room now in every major government agency; recently, they had been installed in the principal embassies worldwide. A multi party network of secure voice, image, and data communication could thus be established within seconds.

Thirty April was aware of that.

At 9:07 that evening in Prague, the driver of a passing car threw a package toward the U.S. embassy guardhouse on Trziste Street. The marine guards wasted half an hour assembling a technical bomb team before discovering the package held nothing more than clothing, a used hypodermic, and a videotape. The clothes were later determined to belong to the kidnapped Vice President. And the tape —

The tape was screened by the ambassador, the CIA Chief of Station, and each of their deputies. Four people called from diplomatic dinners, clandestine surveillance, and one very inviting bed. At 10:12 Prague time, the ambassador contacted the White House.

Now they were all watching — Bigelow, Finch, Tomlinson, O'Neill, Phillips, and Dare. They were joined by the President's Chief of Staff and the White House Situation Room's chief Intelligence officer. Bigelow was restless; he sat barely two feet from the screen, beating a tattoo on his right knee with a presidential pen.

As Otto's hand slashed down with the hypodermic, everyone jumped. And then glanced surreptitiously at one another. The air in the VTC room was stale with tension; Dare was sweating in her black wool dress. Mian Krucevic was famous for one thing — biological agents. As everyone in the VTC room was fully aware.

“Mrs. Payne has just been injected with a bacillus your Intelligence people will want to research,” said Krucevic's voice. “I call it Anthrax 3A. My own hybrid of the common sheep ailment, quite deadly in humans. Where the disease normally takes three days to kill, mine can achieve death in three hours. Mrs. Payne should begin to exhibit the symptoms in about thirty minutes. Fever, blood in the stomach and lungs, a systemic infection. If the disease is allowed to progress unchecked, she will hemorrhage and die.

“It is an immensely unpleasant death, Jack. I've tested Anthrax 3A extensively among the Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

Bigelow shifted in his chair.

Sophie Paynes eyes, caught in the video lens, widened slightly.

“I don't believe you,” she said to the man off camera. “You're bluffing. There was nothing in that needle.”

“Why?” Krucevic's voice retorted. “Because you're a woman? Because you're the Vice President of the United States? Neither fact is of the slightest importance to me. To me, Mrs. Payne, you are just another Jew. One who should never have been born.”

“Killing me gets you nothing,” she shot back. “If I die, so does your bargaining power.”

“Exactly,” Krucevic replied evenly. “Which brings us to hypodermic number two. Otto?”

The audience in the VTC room had time to notice Sophie Payne's labored breathing, the increasing ruddiness of her cheeks. Fear? Or something more deadly?

And then a hooded figure appeared on camera, a fragile child in his arms.

“You have a son, Mrs. Payne,” said Krucevic's voice.

“You know I do. You probably know his shoe size.”

“You love him dearly, I believe?”

Sophie did not answer.

“I, too, have a son. This is my boy, my Jozsef.”

Bigelow scraped his chair closer to the screen, stared at it intently.

The boy lay limp in Otto's grasp, head thrown back, thin legs slack. Beads of sweat glittered on his forehead. His lips, Dare saw, were flecked with blood.

“Jozsef means everything to me,” Krucevic said. “But for my cause, like Abraham and his Isaac, I would sacrifice even my son. A half hour ago I injected Jozsef with Anthrax 3A. In two hours, his lungs will fill with fluid. In three hours, he will drown in his own blood. Do you believe me now, Mrs. Payne?”

“Jesus,” Bigelow hissed. “This guy's one taco short of a combo platter. Does he really have a son?”

“Yes.” Dare's eyes stayed on the screen.

“Whether it's that poor kid or not, who can say?”

“Sophie seems to think so,” Matthew Finch observed quietly. “She looks like hell.”

But the camera lens had shifted to the hooded figure. He laid the boy on the floor. Something flashed in his hand —

“Otto is holding the one thing that can save Sophie Payne's life,” Krucevic told them.

“An antibiotic developed in my own laboratory specifically to combat Anthrax 3A. This antibiotic will save my Jozsef. But whether it can save Mrs. Payne .. . that depends entirely upon you, Jack.”

The needle slipped into the boy's vein. The plunger went home.

“Dare,” Bigelow snarled over his shoulder.

“You got anybody out at the Agency who knows about this sort of shit?”

“Yes,” she said, “although we need that hypodermic to determine what he's really injected her with.”

Bigelow nodded. His eyes were still locked on the video.

“You know what we stand for,” Krucevic said reasonably. “A single Central Europe, rid at last of mongrel races and their degeneration. A Central Europe free to pursue the highest goals of mind and body without the interference of the United States, a Central Europe founded on a genetically pure population. You, Mr. President, and your democratic policies stand in the way of that dream. You foster miscegenation and export its ideals. It's a clever policy, of course — it allows you to divide and conquer. The United States as world policeman, isn't that the goal? First you create the conditions for civil war, then you fly in and establish martial rule. And it all begins so gently. With gestures of good faith, a McDonalds franchise in Red Square.”

Bigelow snorted.

“Over the course of the next five days, a series of events will occur throughout Central Europe that might normally trigger an aggressive response from the United States. However, in deference to Mrs. Payne, you, Jack, shall not lift a finger to intervene. You will refrain from mobilizing NATO forces. You will placate your allies. You will turn a deaf ear to any appeals for help. “If you do otherwise, Sophie Payne will die an unpleasant death. But if you behave, Jack, we will eventually release Mrs. Payne unharmed. Inform the U.S. embassy in Prague of your decision immediately. If you decide to abandon Mrs. Payne to the needle, raise the flag in the embassy garden only to half-mast. If you accede to our demands, raise the flag to the top of the mast. At that point, Mrs. Payne receives my antibiotic. Should you go back on your promise, however. There is always another needle.”