Murder in the CIA Read Free Page B

everyone else in the line, to turn in its direction. A young black man wearing an open white shirt, black trousers, and leather sandals had gotten up on a trash container and began screaming a protest against British policy in South Africa. Everyone’s attention remained on him as two uniformed airport-security officers pushed through crowds of people in his direction.
    “Barrie.”
    She didn’t immediately react. Because she, and everyone else in the line, had turned to her right, her back was to a row of counters. The mention of her name had come from behind her.
    She turned. Her eyebrows went up. She started to say something, a name, a greeting, when the hand came up beneath her nose. In it was a metal tube that might have held a cigar. The thumb on the hand flicked a switch on the tube and a glass ampule inside it shattered, its contents blown into Mayer’s face.
    It all happened so quickly. No one seemed to notice … until she dropped both briefcases to the floor and her hands clutched at her chest as a stabbing pain radiated from deep inside. She couldn’t breathe. The airport, and everyone in it, was wiped away by a blinding white light that sent a spasm of pain through her head.
    “Lady, are you …?”
    Her face was blue. She sank to her knees, her fingers frantic as they tried to tear open her clothing, her chest itself in search of air and relief from the pain.
    “Hey, hey, over here, this lady’s …”
    Mayer looked up into the faces of dozens of people who were crouching low and peering at her, in sympathy or in horror. Her mouth and eyes opened wide, and rasping soundscame from her throat, pleas without words, questions for the faces of strangers so close to her. Then she pitched forward, her face thudding against the hard floor.
    There were screams now from several people who saw what had happened to the tall, well-dressed woman who, seconds before, had stood in line with them.
    The man who’d gone to get cigarettes returned. “What’s this?” he asked as he looked down at Mayer, sprawled on the floor of Terminal Number 2. “Good God,” he said, “someone do something for her.”

3
    BUDAPEST—TWO DAYS LATER
    “I just can’t believe it,” Collette Cahill said to Joe Breslin as they sat at an outdoor table at Gundel, Budapest’s grand old restaurant. “Barrie was … she’d become my best friend. I went out to Ferihegy to meet her flight from London, but she wasn’t on it. I came back to the embassy and called that hotel in Cadogan Gardens she always stays at in London. All they could tell me was that she left that morning for the airport. Malev wouldn’t tell me anything until I got hold of that guy in operations I know who checked the passenger manifest. Barrie was listed as a reservation, but she hadn’t boarded. That’s when I really started worrying. And then … then, I got a call from Dave Hubler in her Washington office. He could barely talk. I made him repeat what he’d said three, four times and …” She’d been fighting tears all evening and now lost the battle. Breslin reached across the table and placed a hand on hers. A seven-piece roving Gypsy band dressed in bright colors approached the table but Breslin waved them away.
    Collette sat back in her chair and drew a series of deepbreaths. She wiped her eyes with her napkin and slowly shook her head. “A heart attack? That’s ridiculous, Joe. She was, what, thirty-five, maybe thirty-six? She was in great shape. Damn it! It can’t be.”
    Breslin shrugged and lighted his pipe. “I’m afraid it can, Collette. Barrie’s dead. No question about that, sadly. What about Réti, her writer?”
    “I tried his house but no one was there. I’m sure he knows by now. Hubler was calling him with the news.”
    “What about the funeral?”
    “There wasn’t any, at least nothing formal. I called her mother that night. God, I dreaded it. She seemed to take it pretty well, though. She said she knew that Barrie wanted