But this, it seemed, was far too direct a question. The boy retreated into himself, once more the guardian of the operation, his fingers worrying the fur of his good-luck charm.
“Who gave you the rabbit's foot?” Sophie asked.
A swift look, pregnant with apprehension.
“Its never out of your hands.”
“I found it.”
“That's probably what you tell your father. It's not the truth.”
He glanced over his shoulder, then leaned toward her.
“My mother gave it to me. For luck during the war, when she was afraid that a sniper's bullet would take me.”
“My son has a good-luck charm,” Sophie lied. “Not a rabbit's foot, but a ring from our naval academy. His father gave it to him before he died. Peter wears it on a chain around his neck, and it never leaves him.”
“His father was a naval person?”
“Curt was a jet pilot a long time ago. In the American navy.”
“Ah.” Jozsef's eyes darkened. Too late, Sophie remembered what American jets had done to Belgrade.
“The ring. It has brought your son good luck?”
Peter's face so much a blend of Curt's and her own that she could no longer see where one began and the other left off flashed briefly before her eyes, then was gone. She felt a pain so sharp she could not speak for several seconds, and then said, “Yes. I think it has brought him luck. Except for his father's death, of course.”
“His father was shot?”
A commonplace question for a terrorist's son.
“He died of cancer.”
“Then perhaps your son forgot to wear his ring that day” Jozsef said with unconscious cruelty. “I have never lost my rabbit's foot, and until I do, I shall be safe. I know that with certainty, so help me God.”
“Is that why you keep it secret? So that the luck won't fade?”
He hesitated and again looked over his shoulder. She knew then that the reason was Mian Krucevic.
“It is all that I have left of my mother,” the boy whispered. “If my father knew where it came from, he would take it away. And what would happen to Mama then?”
“You have to keep her safe, too,” Sophie said with sudden comprehension.
There was a knock on the door and it opened.
“Jozsef,” Michael said. “You're wanted.”
The boy's hand clenched on the scrap of dirty white fur. Then, looking at Sophie, he held his finger to his lips in the age — old gesture for silence. She lifted her finger in return.
Ten
Berlin, 5:07 p.m.
Caroline would have loved to raise a glass with Ie tout Berlin herself. Or a bowl of steaming lentil soup at Café Adler, the small bar that still sat opposite what had once been Checkpoint Charlie. Years earlier John Le Carre, a mere David Cornwell employed by the British secret service, had watched the Cold War begin from one of the café's ringside seats. Checkpoint Charlie had been replaced now by something the Germans called an office park; but the Adler was unchanged, smoky with the romance of mittel Europa. It was time, she thought, to retreat into yellow lamplight and scattered tables, to nurse her jet lag with tea and silence. And consider her next move.
Wally refused to let Caroline wander off, however, and he had no intention of returning her to the Hyatt unfed. They drove through the barricaded streets in his brand — new Volvo, zigzagging around the yawning pits of construction that bisected every boulevard. The early darkness of Berlin's autumn had fallen like a theater scrim over the city; rain lashed against the windshield. Caroline's jet lag was so profound she had begun to shake.
“God, it's good to see you, Mad Dog,” Wally said. “What's it been — two years?”
“More. How did you like Budapest?”
“Nice town. But not my best work. It's a thankless job to replace Eric Carmichael. You can't replace him. You just show up and exit stage left as soon as possible.”
He was trying to make her feel good. The truth was, few people in the Agency could recruit or handle agents as effectively as Wally. He was everybody's hometown buddy the boy who'd never had a date to the prom, the one who held your hand late at night in a thousand seedy bars. With his worn wool suits and his graying goatee, Wally was genuine, Wally was sympathetic, Wally was a stand-up kind of guy; and before you knew it, Wally had slipped you some money and a contract and you were spilling your guts to the CIA.
“So I suppose they gave you Berlin as a way of easing you down gently, right? You're one step away from a Bronze Intelligence Star and a comfortable retirement in upstate New York.”
He grimaced at the windshield.
“I look plausible and I can bullshit up the wa zoo Carrie, but I'm not Eric. What he wouldn't do with this mess, huh? Wouldn't he be in his element right now? A rescue plan for the Vice President of the United States. The ultimate cowboy operation. Of course, if Eric had been around, the hit would've never happened. He'd have rolled up 30 April long ago.”
“Except that they rolled him up first,” Caroline said. And added Wally to the list of people Eric had betrayed.
He glanced at her.
“You any closer to pinning these guys for MedAir 901?”
“No. And that investigation is now on the back burner. Sophie Payne has to take precedence.”
“We'll get 'em,” Wally said positively. “We always do. Even if it takes ten years.”
Caroline had breathed, drunk, and slept MedAir 901 for the past thirty months.
Now the mere mention of the plane made her skin crawl. If the investigation continued if Cuddy Wilmot delved deeper into the truth, like a child picking at a scab what exactly would they learn? That Eric had deliberately killed two hundred and fifty-eight people in order to fake his own death? That as far back as the Frankfurt airport a farewell kiss in a crowded concourse she had not the slightest idea who her husband really was?
“There's something I have to ask you, Wally.”
“Yeah?”
“Eric's handling of the 30 April account. In Budapest. Before he died. You must have walked into a nightmare when you took over.”
“How so?” Wally swerved to avoid a jaywalker suddenly illuminated in the headlights, and cursed into the darkness. “From what I remember, Eric was pretty close to penetrating the organization. He had a recruit in Krucevic's inner circle. Or so I thought.”
“In Budapest?”
Wally wasn't trying to stonewall her. He was simply searching his memory for operational matters that belonged to another posting he'd left six months ago.
Then his eyelids flickered and he down shifted for a turn.
“That'd be DBTOXIN,” he said.
Caroline's breath nearly caught in her throat. A code name to attach to her untested source, a piece of the denied DO file. Wally was trusting her with operational Intelligence. She had better take it in stride.
“DBTOXIN?”
“The last fish Eric reeled in. A biologist in Buda. Trained with Krucevic at the university in Leipzig during the old Cold War days. They're pals from way back.”
“Think they're pals still?”
Wally considered.
“Maybe I should get on the horn to Buda and set up some tasking. See whether TOXIN knows where Krucevic is headed.”
“I sure as hell would.”
“Wonder if the guys still on the payroll.”
“So he wasn't blown when Eric died?”
“TOXIN? No way.” Wally glanced at her. “Is that what you've been thinking? That Eric's last recruit betrayed him? And that's why Krucevic blew up his plane? Disaster's not that personal, Carrie, even in this business.”
Time to change the subject.
“Speaking of personal,” she said, “hows Brenda?”
Brenda was Wally's wife. She was a California native, a vegetarian, and a massage therapist. He had met her during language training in Monterey. She was the last person anybody expected to fall in love with Wally, but the hometown — buddy routine had apparently worked. “Brenda left Berlin about a month ago, right after Voekl came to power. Her grandparents were Holocaust survivors, Caroline. She's not sticking around to see whether Fritz is sane.”