Free The Lie by Michael Weaver Page A

tell you and you’ll be all right.”
    The surgeon lifted his hand from the floor. Paulie saw the automatic a split second before he heard a muffled shot. He felt
     a slight burning across his forehead.
    He grabbed the barrel just as a second shot took him in the arm.
    One more and I’m dead
, he thought. Paulie struggled to turn the barrel in Pinto’s strong hand.
    Finally Paulie wrenched the automatic around and heard the soft sound of a shot smothered between their chests.
    Pinto went limp against the driver’s door. Blood stained his chest where his jacket was open. His eyes stared.
    All I’m left with is a German name
, thought Paulie, who had little doubt that even this would turn out to be false.
    An ambulance siren drew him out of his reverie. He looked around the parking lot. No one was in sight, and the three muffled
     shots inside the car had apparently gone unnoticed. He felt light-headed and curiously without pain. Examining his forehead
     in the rearview mirror, he saw a shallow, angled gash above his right eye slowly oozing blood. Lucky. Lucky, too, with the
     wound in his arm. The bullet had passed through only flesh, and he was able to stanch the bleeding with a handkerchief.
    Moments later he left Dr. Anthony Pinto alone in his car, dead seemingly by his own hand, his finger still on the trigger.
     Paulie walked fifty yards to his third Hertz rental of a very long day, and drove out of the parking lot.
    Expecting nothing, he stopped at a public phone, asked the operator if there was a Rome listing for a Klaus Logefeld, and
     got just what he expected.
    Paulie drove directly to a company safe apartment on the Via Boncompagni and took care of his wounds. He woke in a fever during
     the night, his mind a swirling montage of Kate Dinneson’s face and an anonymous, perhaps even nonexistent German called Klaus
     Logefeld.

Chapter 11
    T HE PRESIDENT WAS ALONE as Tommy Cortlandt entered the Oval Office, a fact that was in itself significant.
    The CIA director could recall only three other times that he hac been summoned to the White House for a private audience.
     Each time had turned out to be special, although never a good sort of special. Once it had come near to being a full-blown
     disaster. Even now, Cortlandt could feel its remembered weight pressing his chest as he crossed the room.
    “It’s good to see you, Tommy.”
    James Dunster rose and came out from behind his desk to shake Cortlandt’s hand. The president was a tall string bean of a
     man, homely and physically awkward enough to be attractive in a distinctly Lincolnesque way. Cartoonists usually had a field
     day portraying him in shawls and stovepipe hats, while the more Freudian of his image makers were certain that his resemblance
     to the Great Emancipator had gotten him elected in the first place.
    “Good to see you, too, Mr. President.”
    Cortlandt searched Dunster’s bony face for possible portents, but found nothing.
    ‘What’s happening, sir?”
    “No more than our normal crises, so you can stop looking so worried.” The president’s voice was soft as a southerner’s drawl,
     but there was no mistaking its touch of New England. “I just need your ear and possible help on something.”
    He motioned the CIA director into a chair and settledhis own length into a facing leather couch. He poured a couple of black coffees from an ever-present thermos and handed a
     cup to Cortlandt.
    “I had a call from German chancellor Eisner a few hours ago,” said the president. “It was routine. Nothing momentous. He happened
     to mention the conference he’s hosting at Wannsee on September 13, and I was struck by something he said.”
    Dunster paused for a sip of coffee.
    “Eisner said, ‘This whole conference is going to be a dark and terrible mirror, and I have to wonder how many of us will be
     able to peer into it and not shudder.’”
    The president paused once more, this time to mull over the words.
    “Of course, the