“It's not a complete loss. We traced a phone call to the Big Man himself. And the conversation was extremely interesting. His VaccuGen secretary had to tell him about a delivery that went awry.”
Delivery. Caroline pushed herself upright in bed. Had Krucevic planned to dump Sophie Payne?
“Somebody's prescription got into the wrong hands,” Scottie continued. “The Big Man was quite upset. We're crying to figure out why.”
“Was this medicine intended for our missing friend?” she asked.
“We don't think so. But she may not be doing too well. The specialists on this end are worried about her prognosis.”
Caroline's heart sank. Careful as Scottie might be, the message of his last words was unmistakable. Sophie Payne was dying.
“And the secretary? The one who made that call? Could you find her?”
“That's been tried. She's left work under something of a cloud. The Big Man was rather angry, to judge by his tone of voice. Surprised and rattled, even. As though a fly had devoured all the ointment.”
“I see. What do you want me to do, Scottie?”
“I may need you to fly to Poland. I'll call you tomorrow if it's necessary.”
“Poland?”
“Our friend Cuddy has spotted some activity there. In the accounts he's monitoring.”
VaccuGen's corporate accounts. He'd fired up DESIST and found a financial trail.
Caroline's heartbeat quickened.
“New money?”
“Lots of it. Cash is flooding into a certain German party organization — and from there to friends in Poland. We find that .. .”
“Ironic,” Caroline replied. “Given the state of coffers here.”
“Well, one market's bear can be another's bull,” he retorted lazily, as though he enjoyed this game of charades.
But Caroline was sick of it.
“You think our missing friend has gone to Poland, too?”
“Possibly. But she's running out of time.” His voice changed.
“Have you heard again from the fair-haired boy?”
“No. But I've changed cities. Even he might need some time to adjust.”
Which showed how poorly she'd judged Eric.
She had closed the drapes against the fading glow of the ruined Houses of Parliament and was almost asleep when the knock came on the door.
Shephard, she thought, and had the impulse to hide under the covers. There was something in the way he looked at her now that made her uneasy. The LegAtt's eyes were too intense, too probing; somewhere in the air between Berlin and Buda, they had lost a professional distance. Perhaps, Caroline thought, it was because she reminded him of his dead wife. She preferred Shephard caustic and uncommunicative; it made him less threatening.
Another knock, louder this time.
She crossed the room and looked for a peephole. There was none. She slid the chain into the bolt and cracked the door four inches, peering out into the hallway.
Whatever she had intended to say died on her lips.
“For the love of God, get me inside before somebody sees me,” Eric muttered.
She pulled the chain hurriedly out of the bolt.
He slipped through the door and shut it behind him. He was wearing a white busboy's coat; the dining trolley he'd abandoned in the hall.
Employee entrance, she thought; and a kitchen computer listing all the guests, for room service.
“You shouldn't have come here. The station's all over the place.”
“How did I know you were going to say that?” he asked, and took her in his arms.
The shock of his hands moving over her in the darkness of that room was too much. Dead hands, she thought. How many lost nights in the last two and a half years had she cried for Eric's touch, for the solid span of his shoulders beneath her fingertips, the warmth of his face skimming hers? She allowed herself an instant of indulgence and breathed deep of his scent. He smelled of cigarettes and of sulfurous brown coal, of dead leaves and city rain; he smelled of human skin and human hair and the lingering hint of floral-scented soap. He smelled of Budapest and Nicosia and Tidewater, Virginia, of years and heartache and sex and longing. He smelled of life, a life lived without her; a band of pain tightened around her chest.
She had mourned the loss of his body as much as his soul — this body, strong and controlling, almost feral in the darkness. She shuddered and closed her eyes, feeling his hands on her rib cage, her shoulder, the lobe of her ear. His touch stung her skin with so much rippling life — and for an instant, she wanted to cry aloud with joy, she wanted to forget every unbearable moment of her days without him, she wanted to cradle his head and thank God that he was alive. It was what she had prayed for so uselessly during the long nights of grief: a life returned. A second chance. And her prayer had been answered.
But with what vicious reckoning.
This man was no miracle. He was a walking lie.
The rage of the past two years boiled hotly to the surface, so that her own mouth tore back at his, a savage thing that wanted to hurt him. Through the busboy's coat he wore she could feel the thud of his heart, too fast, and the tension in his body, as though he were coiled to spring. But then, Eric was always a predator. She gripped his arms tightly and thrust him away.
“Where is Sophie Payne?”
He was breathless, a diver mad for air.
“I can't tell you that. Not yet.”
If he refuses to give up the goods, Scottie muttered in her brain, shut him down, Caroline. Everything else is just crap.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“You're here,” he said baldly, and took a step toward her again.
“I'm here to find the Vice President. Your death made me an expert on 30 April, Eric.”
“Caroline — ”
“Tell me where she is. That's all I want from you.”
“I need more time.”
“You've had too much time, you son of a bitch!” Tears of rage pricked at her throat — rage at his insouciance, at the way he had walked back into her life as though he expected her to be there, her arms wide open — She was terrified, suddenly, of breaking down. Rage was her friend. Rage was a tool. Let him believe she was stronger alone than she had ever been in his shadow. Let him fear the High Priestess of Reason.
She moved toward him, her hand punching hard into his chest with each step.
“One call to the lobby, Eric, and I shut you down! One call”
“You won't do that.”
“Give me a good reason!” She had one already: Bring Eric in, and he'd damage the Agency irrevocably. She cared little for bureaucracies creaking roughshod over the world, but Dare Atwood, Cuddy, Scottie Sorensen — they were all the people Caroline loved, the only ones left to protect.
“Don't you understand? It's over. No more vendettas, no more little girls with bullets in their brains. No hijacked VP's.” It ends lie re He gave way, a bewildered expression on his face.
“Much more is at stake than Sophie Payne. You need Krucevic, Caroline. More than that, you need everything he runs — the bank accounts, the networks, the points of liaison worldwide. You've got to roll him up. That's what I've been working for. Not just Krucevic's life, but everything he's built.”
“So work with we,” she den-landed. “Give me the route to his base here in Hungary. Give me the Polish operation. Anything, Eric, that might help.”
“You know about Poland?”
Caroline laughed harshly.
“What did you think — that only you could do this job? We've all been doing it while you were dead and buried. I wish to hell you'd stayed that way.”
“No, you don't,” he whispered. His face was stark in the orange glow flooding the room from across the river. The light made a death mask of the sharp planes of his face, and she saw how much the past few years had aged him.