Francine Mathews - The Cutout

“But Tarcic is all we've got.”

Marinelli opened his mouth to argue and then abruptly closed it as the truth of Caroline's words hit home.

Tom looked up from the blueprints.

“Are the Buda police searching for this woman?”

Marinelli's eyes shifted away.

“I don't know. Maybe they are.”

Which meant, Caroline thought, that they certainly were. Marinelli had given his police source Mirjana Tarcic an even trade for the mans information about Horvath.

“Perhaps we should get to her first,” Shephard mused. “Control the situation. The Vice President's fate demands that much.”

“I have to agree.” And for the first time, Marinelli's medieval face wore a troubled expression. Had he begun to doubt himself?

“Maybe I can help,” Tom offered. “I've got contacts here at the Interior Ministry. The Hungarian FBI. Do you have a photograph of Tarcic, by any chance?” The station chief did.

It was a candid shot, probably taken by a case officer through a car window. She was walking along a city street, muffled in a winter coat; but miraculously the photographer had gotten the angle right, and the woman's face filled the frame.

Lank dark hair, deep-set Balkan eyes it was an arresting face, gaunt with middle age, hollow with anxiety.

Caroline passed the photograph to Tom Shephard. He tapped it lightly with one finger.

“The federal police owe me some favors.”

“Let's hope they can keep their mouths shut,” Mannelli said.

Szentendre was an ancient town of Byzantine Rite churches, all facing east; of artists and musicians and tourist kitsch. A small jewel of Balkan architecture, it had been founded in 1389, after the Turks won the Battle ofKosovo and the vanquished Serbs fled west and north. Like many places born of exile, it felt more authentic than the original. Most of the Serbs had returned to Belgrade four hundred years later, rather than swear allegiance to the Hapsburg Empire; but a few had remained. Mirjana Tarcic's mother was descended from one of them.

She rented an apartment above an art gallery on Gorog Utca, a steep and narrow street running down to the banks of the Danube. Two rooms, with wide-plank pine flooring and red woven rugs, wooden tables painted in the Hungarian folk fashion, and a galley kitchen hung about with antique copper butter molds.

Skylights were cut into the sloping roof, and on days of bright sun the rugs fired crimson, the trailing flowers on the painted chair-backs leapt to vivid life. It was a comfortable place for a single woman — or two women, when Mirjana drove out from the city for the weekend.

She had driven out a day early this time, because of the riots. She had driven out of Bela Horvath's alley as though Mian Krucevic were after her with a chain saw. She arrived at three A.M. and let herself into the apartment with her spare key. Four hours later, her mother found her asleep on the living-room sofa.

Bela Horvath's body had not yet been discovered in the ruins of his lab. She was granted a period of ignorance.

Mirjana slept fitfully, despite the soothing drum of rain on the skylight glass.

She awoke with a start to the slam of a door and knew that her mother had left for work. The older woman owned an antiques store on the main street of Szentendre, Fe Ter, a thriving business now that people had cash to spend.

It was already after ten o'clock.

Panic washed over Mirjana. She turned, threw off the wool blanket her mother had tucked around her, and searched frantically for the notebook and ampules. They were there still, on the floor at the sofa's foot, where she had dropped them the night before.

The strong earthen smell of coffee pulled her to the kitchen. Her mind was still dazed with terror. Her ribs, cracked and tightly taped by a Budapest hospital, ached with every breath. Mian Krucevic lurked in the corners of her brain, in the closets she forced him to occupy; he hammered loudly at her padlocked doors.

He knew about her mother. He knew the apartment in Szentendre. What had she been thinking of to draw him this way? Fool. She had thrown herself down the Danube Bend in desperation, in the middle of the night, but she could not stay. Her mother — Where were the ampules? The notebook? What time was it, now?

She stared crazily around the room, her throat swelling with fear, then saw them lying where she had left them — on the floor near the sofa. Thank God. She wasn't losing her mind. She took a deep swallow of the coffee, choked, and spat it into the sink.

Why was she so afraid of him? He had done almost everything to her body that one man could do. If he killed her at last, it would be nothing more than a single moment of terror in the long line of such moments that had punctuated her life.

She was not afraid of pain. She was terrified of losing. For once in her life she had the upper hand with Mian Krucevic — she had the notebook and the ampules, she had knowledge and power over his life. She had a chance to take back Jozsef.

She would find a safe place. She would hide herself and her mother. And then she would contact Mian — somehow, there was always a way — and tell him what she knew. What she could give to the world, to the United States: the truth about vaccine No. 413.

And at last, after decades of torment and loss and terror, she would grind his balls under her heel, and wear cleats to do it. She would demand the return of her son.

And then? Wiaf flicn, Mirjana? You do not make deals with the devil. Because the devil always wins.

Where is the notebook? The ampules? Dabo sacuva — There. Near the sofa.

She poured half the cup of coffee down the drain with shaking fingers. And at that moment, there was a knock on the door.

Mirjana went rigid. She could not breathe.

Another knock, louder this time.

And then the sound of a metal pick sliding into the lock.

There was no other way out of the apartment. She was trapped.

Mirjana tore wildly across the small room, whimpering deep in her throat, and snatched up the notebook and ampules. He will not win.

She thrust Bela's things under her mother's mattress in a kind of frenzy. She had mounted a chair and unlocked the skylight by the time the front door was kicked open.

Shephard insisted on escorting Caroline past the Volksturm tanks and down Dorottya Utca toward Vorosmarty Ter.

“Are you coming with me?” he asked abruptly.

“To the Interior Ministry?” She was surprised. “I'd just cramp your style. These are your contacts, Shephard. You don't need me hovering in the background. I require too much explanation.”

“That you do,” he muttered under his breath. “So are you off for a quick change in a telephone booth? Caroline Carmichael into Sally Bowles? A meeting with Sharif's Budapest division, say?”

She stopped short. So he had taken Wally Aronson's hints to heart. What else was Tom Shephard beginning to suspect?

“Look,” she temporized, “I'm sorry I haven't been completely frank. We work for different agencies. We have different kinds of constraints. I don't expect you to explain your operational code. So don't ask me to explain mine. I promise you that everything I do with blond hair or black is dedicated toward finding the Vice President.”

His sharp eyes bored into hers, unappeased.

“If you want to nab Mirjana Tarcic, you'd better get going,” she said.

“Where will you be?”

“At Gerbeaud's. The cafe in Vorosmarty Ter. I need some coffee.”

“I'll meet you there for lunch.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Let's say one o'clock.”

“Done.”

She waited on the sidewalk until he was out of sight, despite the raw wind gusting off the Danube. Something in the way he carried himself in his rumpled clothes graceful as a cricketer in flannels, from an era long dead lifted her spirits immeasurably. She found that she was actually thankful for him: for Tom Shephard, the millstone around her neck. She had not anticipated how useful he could be. He was, after all, the Central European LegAtt. The security systems of an entire region were theoretically at his fingertips. Mirjana Tarcic was as good as bagged.