Free Blown by Francine Mathews

streetlight while I watched. I saw him, Tom.”
    “Does he look like this?” Tom pulled a folded paper from his pocket and flashed it in front of her eyes.
    She drew a shuddering breath and nodded once. “Where did you get that?”
    “Dana Enfield.”
    “The Speaker’s wife?”
    “She was poisoned at the marathon today. I don’t think she’ll last the night. But she gave us this.”
    Caroline studied the forensic sketch. It showed the world a fighter: square-jawed, pugnacious, with a sharp beak of a nose under a peaked military cap. “He was a Marine?”
    “Dressed like one. The sketch doesn’t square with the list of personnel at Hains Point we got from the Corps. I’ve seen those guys. Seven of the twelve are black, to start with, and the rest are barely twenty.”
    “So . . . you think this . . . shooting tonight”—Cuddy glanced uncomfortably at Dare’s corpse, which was being lifted onto a gurney—“is linked to the ricin attack?”
    “Death to Jack Bigelow and the corrupt maggots who keep him in power,” Tom quoted. “Yeah, I think it’s linked.”
    “He was supposed to kill me,” Caroline muttered. Her cheeks were wet and she was still stroking Alistair’s fur. “Not Dare, me. She should be alive right now. If we hadn’t bothered her tonight—”
    “She’d have died regardless,” Cuddy interrupted brutally. “We didn’t lead that man here, Caroline. This was all part of a plan. He knew where to hide and where to aim. He cased the house.”
    “Question is,” Shephard added, “how many others are on his list?”
    His cell phone bleated; they waited while he took the call.
    “Al Tomlinson,” he mouthed over the receiver. “My director. We’re wanted in the Oval Office ASAP.”

Chapter 12
    BERLIN, 5:23 A.M.
    The black Mercedes had taken Eric to what he guessed was a safe house on the northern outskirts of the city. Blinds drawn down over the windows, furniture as gray as the city morgue’s, two couches and a coffee table with ashtray conveniently provided. He was certain that the large mirror on the dividing wall was designed for purposes of observation, and that a camera and a tape recorder would be playing behind it. Eric never smoked except for cover, and he did not accept the cigarettes they offered. The two men had refused to identify themselves, and this was unusual in his experience of German police. They took his backpack and removed its contents to another room he was not permitted to enter.
    He felt a curious mixture of despair and relief: relief that the long hunt of years was over, despair at the impossibility of escape. Once, he thought of Caroline: alone somewhere in Washington, waiting for Payne’s funeral. He refused to think of her again.
    Do you know why we’ve brought you here? one of the men asked. He was short and aggressive in posture, with the bland Bavarian looks of a dairy farmer. Eric mentally labeled him Klaus.
    “I don’t speak German,” he said, firmly British, “and I’ll thank you to explain this outrage fully—if not to me, then to my consulate. I’m a U.K. subject and a fellow member of the EC and we don’t take kindly to having our rights abused.”
    Klaus drew back his arm and smashed his fist into Eric’s nose. Pain seared through his head and he felt the warm wetness of blood on his lip.
    No, he decided as he reeled backward, not the police.
    The second man was an ascetic-looking type with deeply set eyes whom Eric had christened Ernst. He handed Eric a handful of tissues and clapped a hand on his shoulder sympathetically. “If that is how you choose to play the game, my friend,” he murmured in English, “so be it. There’s no hurry. We have all night.”
     
    You’re aware of the bombing of the Brandenburg Gate, two weeks ago?
    “How could I not be? A dreadful tragedy—dreadful.”
    He held on to the British accent for the first five hours of interrogation and beating. Klaus, he decided, was a fairly stupid man, but he had