The Cutout

Praise for
THE CUTOUT

“MATHEWS DISHES UP A VERY SCARY TALE OF INTRIGUE AND ESPIONAGE.…THE THRILLS IN THIS BOOK ARE IN ALL THE REALISTIC DETAILS. MATHEWS IS A FORMER CIA ANALYST WHO’S ABLE TO TRANSLATE HER EXPERTISE INTO A HIGH-ACTION THRILLER THAT KICKS OFF IN A LIVELY FASHION. CARMICHAEL IS ONE OF THE TOUGHEST FEMALE SECRET AGENTS WE’VE SEEN IN A LONG TIME. NO WONDER HER NICKNAME IS MAD DOG.”

—USA TODAY

“RIVETING … [Mathews’s] presentation of espionage and CIA tactics is impeccable.

—Publishers Weekly

“Francine Mathews’s
The Cutout
is not just a fresh new voice in international intrigue, it’s a brand-new vision—INTELLIGENT, PASSIONATE, AND UNCEASINGLY ENTERTAINING.”

—
Stephen White,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Program

“Francine Mathews writes with precision and authority.
The Cutout
is A TOP-RATE SPY THRILLER. I loved it.”

—
Ridley Pearson,
New York Times
bestselling author
of Middle of Nowhere

MORE PRAISE FOR FRANCINE MATHEWS’S
THE CUTOUT

“Mathews … hits the mark with
The Cutout
, an espionage tale that satisfies history and spy enthusiasts as well as politicos and action-adventure readers…. The book excels where most others stumble into stereotypes.
The Cutout
will engage readers of both genders in the secret world of espionage and the quest for vindication, lost love and fallen agents…. OUTSTANDING.”

—Las Vegas Magazine

“Former CIA analyst Francine Mathews brings a real knowledge of the world of espionage to this international thriller…. Told with JUST THE RIGHT MIX OF INTER-OFFICE INTRIGUE AND HIGH-STAKES DRAMA.”

—The Detroit News

“Intense … an ending that will leave you
screaming for more … THE HOTTEST READ
OF THE SEASON.”

—Romantic Times

“Tightly written … [Mathews]
appears to have hit it big with
The Cutout.”

—
Rocky Mountain News

“The plot is DIZZYING … a plot I definitely had to read in one sitting!”

—Booknews

“An exciting espionage thriller … The story line from the outset is fast-paced, never slows down even during an insider’s look at the spy school training program, and ends with an exhilarating climax … BRILLIANT.”

—The Midwest Book Review

“Fast-paced … crisp, intelligent.”

—The Toronto Sun

Mysteries by Francine Mathews
Featuring Merry Folger

DEATH IN A COLD HARD LIGHT
DEATH IN THE OFF-SEASON
DEATH IN ROUGH WATER
DEATH IN A MOOD INDIGO

and

The Jane Austen Mystery Series by Francine Mathews
Writing as Stephanie Barron

JANE AND THE UNPLEASANTNESS
AT SCAR GRAVE MANOR
JANE AND THE MAN OF THE CLOTH
JANE AND THE WANDERING EYE
JANE AND THE GENIUS OF THE PLACE
JANE AND THE STILLROOM MAID
JANE AND THE PRISONER
OF WOOL HOUSE

This book is dedicated with love to Rafe Sagalyn,
literary agent and friend,
who made me write it;

and to Barbara, the original Mad Dog.
I’d never have survived the Farm without you.

Cutout:
A third person used to conceal the contact between two people—usually an agent and a handler who do not want to meet because one or both may be under surveillance.

—NORMAN POLMAR AND THOMAS B. ALLEN,
The Encyclopedia of Espionage

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A tour through the Intelligence world is marked by a series of rituals. There is the initiation of the polygraph; the rite of passage that is tradecraft training; the ceremonial presentation of the first Certificate of Merit or presidential stickpin. And upon exiting, there is the moment when one is required to sign an oath of secrecy. That oath obligated me to submit
The Cutout
to the CIA’s Publications Review Board, which is charged with removing classified material from text written by former employees. The board reviewed this work in both draft and final manuscript form, and I would like to thank them for their thoroughness, expediency, and professionalism—and for requesting me to change only one word.

The Cutout
would never have seen the light of publication without the intelligent editing and heartfelt encouragement of Kate Miciak, vice president and executive editor of Bantam Dell Books. I have worked with Ms. Miciak for years now, on a variety of novels, but never have I valued her skill and dedication so much as in the present instance.

I would also like to express my deep gratitude to Dale and Linda Lovin, formerly of the FBI, and to Paul Gray, Chief of FAA Security at Denver International Airport. Their professional advice and willingness to assist a writer who was sometimes out of her depth were invaluable. Any errors unwittingly committed in the translation of their facts to fiction must be considered entirely my own.

My final word of thanks must go to all those women and men of the CIA who trained, befriended, and inspired me, and to my family, who endured my moods and temper during the long months required for this book’s completion.

Part I
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9

ONE
Berlin, 12:03
P.M.

S
HE WAS A SMALL WOMAN
; the press had always made much of that. On this crisp November morning in the last days of a bloody century, she stood tiptoe on a platform designed to lift her within sight of the crowd. They were a polyglot mass—threadbare German students, Central Europeans, a smattering of American tourists. A few Turks holding bloodred placards were shadowed, of course, by the ubiquitous security detail of the new regime. After twenty-four hours in Berlin, Sophie Payne had grown accustomed to the presence of riot police.

The international press corps jostled her audience freely, cameras held high like religious icons. The new German chancellor had not yet banned the media. Just across Pariser Platz, at the foot of the Brandenburg Gate, sat a tangle of television vans and satellite dishes. Sophie surveyed them from her podium and understood that she was making history. The first American Vice President to descend upon the new German capital of Berlin, she had appeared at a troubled time. The people
gathered in the square expected her to deliver an
American
message—the promise of solidarity in struggle. Or perhaps redemption?

She had come to Berlin at the request of her President, Jack Bigelow, to inaugurate a foothold in the capital. Behind her, to the rear of the seats held down by the German foreign minister and the U.S. ambassador, the new embassy rose like an operatic set. Before it, Sophie Payne might have been a marionette, Judy playing without Punch, an official government doll.

The U.S. embassy’s design had been fiercely debated for years. The trick, it seemed, was to avoid all visual reference to Berlin’s twentieth century—that unfortunate period of persistent guilt and klaxons in the night. Comparison with the present regime might prove unfortunate. But neither was the nineteenth century entirely acceptable; that had produced Bismarck, after all, and the march toward German militarism. The State Department planners had settled at last on a postmodernist compromise: a smooth, three-storied expanse of limestone corniced like a Chippendale highboy.

It might, Sophie thought, have been a corporate headquarters. It made no statement of any kind. That was probably her job today, too.

But in the last thirty-six hours she had read the obscene graffiti scrawled on the new Holocaust memorial. She had met with third-generation Turkish “guest workers”—
gastarbeiters
—about to be repatriated to a country they had never seen. She had even dined with the new chancellor, Fritz Voekl, and applauded politely when he spoke of the rebirth of German greatness. Then she had lain sleepless far into the night, remembering her parents. And decided that a statement must be made.

Now she set aside her carefully crafted speech and adjusted the mike.
“Meine Damen una Herren.”

In the pause that followed her amplified words, Sophie distinctly heard a child wailing. She drew breath and gripped the podium.

“We come here today to celebrate a new capital for a new century,” she said. That was innocuous enough; it might have been drawn from the sanitized pages she had just discarded.

“We celebrate, too, the dedication and sacrifice of generations of men and women, on both sides of the Atlantic, who committed their lives to the defeat of Communism.” Nothing to argue with there—nothing that might excite the black-clad police or their waiting truncheons.

“But the fact that we do so today in the city of Berlin is worthy of particular attention,” she continued. “The capital of Germany’s past as well as her future, Berlin can never be wholly reborn. It carries its history in every stone of its streets. For Berlin witnessed Hitler’s tyranny and horror, and Berlin paid for its sins in blood. As we dedicate this embassy, let us commit ourselves to one proposition: that never again will this nation submit to dictatorship. Never again will it shut its doors to any race. Berlin must be the capital for
all
Germany’s people.”

There was a tremendous roar—spontaneous, uplifting, and utterly foolhardy—from the crowd in the middle of Pariser Platz. A bearded figure waved his placard, chanting in a torrent of Turkish; he was followed by others, scattered throughout the square, and in an instant the police truncheons descended in a savage arc. Someone screamed. Sophie took a step back from the podium; she saw a woman crumple under the feet of the crowd.

Nell Forsyte, her Secret Service agent, was instantly at her side. “Say thank you and get out,” Nell muttered.

Sophie reached for the microphone. And before the sound of the blast ripped through the cries swelling from Pariser Platz, she felt something—a vibration in the wooden platform beneath her feet, as though the old square sighed once before giving up its ghost. Then the Brandenburg Gate bloomed like a monstrous stone flower and the screaming began—a thin, high shriek piercing the chaos. A wave of red light boiled toward the podium where she stood, paralyzed, and she thought,
Good God. It’s a bomb. Did I do that?

Nell Forsyte flung Sophie to the platform like a rag doll and lay heavily on her back, a human shield shouting unintelligible orders. Somewhere quite close, a man cried out in French. Glass shattered as the shock wave slammed outward; the plate-glass windows of the luxury hotels buckled, the casements of a dozen tour buses popped like caramelized sugar. And then, with all the violence of a Wagnerian chorus, the massive glass dome of the nearby Reichstag splintered and crashed inward.

The chaos suspended thought and feeling. For an instant, Sophie breathed outside of time.

“You okay?” Nell demanded hoarsely in her ear.

She nodded, and her forehead struck the wooden platform. “Get off my back, Nell. You’re killing me.”