The Cutout - Hardcover

Mathews, Francine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 055310893X ISBN 13: 9780553108934

Publisher: Bantam, 2001

Synopsis

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. A pawn.
— The Encyclopedia of Espionage

In an electrifying thriller debut guaranteed to redefine the genre, Francine Mathews brings her expertise and experience as a former CIA analyst to a work of fiction that reads like the real thing — in a breathtaking tale of a world on the brink of chaos ... and the one woman who can stop the deadly countdown to global terror.

They were partners, lovers, soul mates in a business where betrayal is only a heartbeat away. CIA analyst Caroline Carmichael lost her husband Eric when his plane was blown out of the sky by an elite group of terrorists known as 30 April.

For two years she's headed an Agency task force tracking Eric's killers. Now, her dead husband has surfaced among those responsible for an explosion that rocks Berlin — and for the daring kidnapping of the U.S. Vice President.

The news sends CIA headquarters into turmoil. Desperate to bury evidence of a maverick agent, uncertain of Eric's motives and loyalties, the Agency plays its last, best card: Eric's wife — the Cutout — sent to Germany as bait to reel him and his VIP hostage in from the cold.

Someone is trying to rewrite history and Eric alone knows who it is, how it is to be done, and when. Caroline's assignment is to learn whether Eric is a rogue agent gone bad — or if he has thrown himself under deep cover to terminate a ruthless psychopath bent on changing the face of Europe.

Torn between duty to country and the ghosts of her past, the Cutout swiftly finds herself drawn deep into a dizzying maze where one wrong turn will mean certain death. And in a game where even the life of a Vice President is a pawn, Caroline knows that the Cutout will be the first to fall.

This scorching debut was bought by Warner Bros. prior to publication. Peopled by a remarkable heroine and an authentic cast of characters, sparked with dizzying ambiguities and explosive climaxes, The Cutout is thriller writing at its finest — and it introduces a masterful writer who will take the suspense genre by storm.

About this title

About the Author

Francine Mathews spent four years as an intelligence analyst at the CIA, where she trained in operations and worked briefly on the investigation into the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103. A former journalist, she lives and writes in Colorado.

From the Back Cover

"Francine Mathews writes with precision and authority. The Cutout is a top-rate spy thriller. I loved it."
-- New York Times-bestselling author Ridley Pearson

"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 Cold Case

From the Inside Flap

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. A pawn.
-- The Encyclopedia of Espionage

In an electrifying thriller debut guaranteed to redefine the genre, Francine Mathews brings her expertise and experience as a former CIA analyst to a work of fiction that reads like the real thing -- in a breathtaking tale of a world on the brink of chaos ... and the one woman who can stop the deadly countdown to global terror.

They were partners, lovers, soul mates in a business where betrayal is only a heartbeat away. CIA analyst Caroline Carmichael lost her husband Eric when his plane was blown out of the sky by an elite group of terrorists known as 30 April.

For two years she's headed an Agency task force tracking Eric's killers. Now, her dead husband has surfaced among those responsible for an explo

Reviews

The kidnapping of the U.S. vice-president, Sophie Payne, sets off a firestorm of CIA intelligence and rescue activity in this first espionage thriller by Mathews, the popular author of the Merry Folger mystery series. After making a controversial speech in Berlin, Payne is abducted by a fringe terrorist group known as 30 April. For CIA operative and protagonist Caroline Carmichael, the kidnapping becomes more complicated when her husband (and associate), Eric, is spotted in the video footage of the abduction, leading her boss to think that he may have turned traitor on his CIA colleagues. Carmichael is chosen to head up the clandestine rescue operation because of her knowledge of the terrorist leader, but the time window for Payne's rescue is reduced considerably when her captors inject the v-p with a deadly anthrax strain. Carmichael sprints to Budapest and then Bosnia, all the while trying to balance her love for her husband with her knowledge of his duplicitous and often deadly tactics. Mathews, a former CIA intelligence analyst, keeps the action moving at a sprightly pace, and her presentation of espionage and CIA tactics is impeccable. But the secondary characters from Eastern Europe are a faceless bunch, and the author focuses so intently on the espionage activity that she ignores the reaction of the world at large to the kidnapping, although she does toss in an intriguing subplot dealing with the possible involvement of the German chancellor in the crime. Mathews makes up for these small flaws by avoiding an obvious formula ending, allowing the final riveting rescue attempt in an abandoned underground concentration camp to end on an unlikely note. It remains to be seen whether Merry Folger readers will make the genre leap with Mathews, but fans of spy thrillers should be alerted to this promising debut. Major ad/promo. (Jan. 30)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

One
Berlin, 12:03 P.M.

She 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. Turbaned 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 und 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 turbaned 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."

"Stay down."

"I'd prefer to get up."

The Secret Service agent ignored her, but Sophie felt a slight shifting in the woman's weight; Nell was craning her head to scan the square. Sophie had a momentary vision of a pile of dignitaries -- American, German all crushed beneath their respective security details. She giggled. It was an ugly sound, halfway between a sob and a gasp. If I could just get up, I'd feel better. More in control. She dug an elbow into Nell's ribs.

The agent grunted. "When I count to three, stand up and face the embassy. I'll cover your back."

"Shouldn't we crawl?"

"Too much glass."

Nell gave the count and heaved Sophie to her feet. Only then did the vice president notice that she'd lost a shoe. All around her, men and women lay on the platform amid splatters of blood, a hail of glass. The podium, Sophie realized, had miraculously shielded her from shrapnel. A tense ring of German security men surrounded the foreign minister; he sprawled motionless amid a heap of splintered chairs. Somebody -- the embassy doctor, Sophie thought -- was tearing open his shirt.

At the right side of the platform, maybe a yard from where she stood, a dark-skinned turbaned figure drew a machine gun from his coat and aimed it at Sophie.

She stared at him, fascinated.

Then Nell's pistol popped and the man's left eye welled crimson. He reeled like a drunk, his gun discharging in the air.

This time, Nell tackled her at the knees.

* * *

The medevac helicopter circled over Pariser Platz twice, ignoring the frantic signal of an ambulance crew from the rubble below. There was nowhere to land; survivors trampled the wounded underfoot, and the main exits to the Tiergarten and Unter den Linden were choked with tumbled stone and rescue vehicles. The chopper pilot veered sharply left and hovered over the roof of the embassy. Normally, a marine guard would have been posted there for the duration of the vice president's speech, but the soldiers had probably rushed below in the first seconds after the explosion. The roof was empty. The pilot found the bull's-eye of the landing pad and set down the craft.

A two-man team scuttled out of the chopper, backs bent under the wind of the blades. They rolled a white-sheeted gurney between them. A third man -- blond-haired, black-jacketed -- crouched in the craft's open doorway. He covered the team with an automatic rifle until they reached the rooftop door. There, one of the men drew a snub-nosed submachine gun from his white lab coat and fired at the communications antennae bolted to the embassy roof. Then he blew the lock off the door.

A security alarm blared immediately. It was drowned in the clamor of Pariser Platz.

The blond-haired man raised his gun and glanced over his shoulder at the helicopter pilot. "They're in. Give them three minutes." He scanned the rooftop, the heating ducts and the forest of defunct antennae. Brand-new, state-of-the-art listening posts, all shot to hell in seconds. The CIA techies had probably been there for weeks installing them.

The helicopter rotors whined, and the man in the black jacket steadied himself against the door frame as the craft lifted into the air. The screams below seemed hardly to affect him. He scanned the square like a hawk, waiting for the moment to dive.

* * *

Machine-gun fire. It was the sound of her recurring nightmare -- a dream about the execution and a firing squad. Sophie struggled in Nell's grip, choking on the wave of oily smoke that had flooded Pariser Platz. It was impossible to see much -- only the blank wall of the embassy looming. The agent lifted her under the armpits like a child.

"We've got to get inside." Nell thrust Sophie toward the dignitaries' chairs, vacant now as a theater on a bad opening night, shards of glass sparkling everywhere. Sophie could feel Nell's urgency nipping at her heels.

A marine guard thrust open the shattered main door. Then he fell, slack-mouthed and s...

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 055310893X
• ISBN 13: 9780553108934
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416