by Vince Flynn
“Good morning, Vanessa,” Rapp said crisply.
“Good morning, Michelle.”
“Is she in her office?”
“No, she’s up on the roof having tea and crumpets, ya dumb ass.”
“Cranky this morning, you old codger? Still not getting any?”
The fifty-two-year-old Italian American from Philadelphia laughed loudly. “Now that’s not true, Mitch.” He stepped closer to Rapp, and after looking over both shoulders said, “You should have seen me last night. There’s this new gal I met at the club. I was like a rock star. I’m amazed I can walk this morning, because I’ll tell you right now she’s in traction.” He looked once again toward Kennedy’s office door and stepped even closer to Rapp. “Listen to this.”
Rapp’s arm shot out like a traffic cop. “Stop.” He closed his eyes and shook his head in an attempt to erase the picture big hairy Vince Delgado was attempting to scar him with.
Rapp walked toward Kennedy’s door and then knocked on it.
“Hey, are we still shooting this afternoon?” Delgado was a former Recon Marine and phenomenal shot, which was in part how he and Rapp had got to know each other so well.
“Yep,” answered Rapp. “I’ll see you there at two.”
Rapp entered Kennedy’s office and found her sitting at her desk focusing intently on an opened red file. “Morning.”
“Good morning,” Kennedy answered without taking her eyes off the top secret document.
“How’s Tommy?” Rapp was referring to Kennedy’s eight-year-old son.
“He’s busy, but he misses you, of course. He just asked about you last night.”
“Does he have a game Saturday?” Tommy was playing his first year of tackle.
“Yes. Eleven a.m.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Good.” Kennedy took off her reading glasses. “Make sure you bring Anna with. He likes to show her off.”
“Oh…he’s getting to that age now.” Rapp raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t think he’s been the same since he saw her in a swimsuit last summer.”
“I don’t think I’ve been the same either.”
Kennedy slid her chair away from her desk. “He’s definitely changing. Very brand-conscious all of a sudden. He has to have his hair a certain way…this shirt is cool, this one is lame and on top of all that…he’s gotten quite mouthy.”
With a straight face he asked, “Did you ever think maybe it’s your management style?”
“You’re a very funny man.”
Rapp shrugged. “All kids go through phases.”
“Apparently. What’s your excuse?” Kennedy looked at Rapp and thought, not for the first time, how nice it would be to have a man at home to help. Not Rapp of course. They were more like brother and sister. But it was impossible to miss the way Tommy was drawn to him, or the tone Mitch would use when Tommy was out of line and the way her young son would instantly react. Her prospects, however, were not good. Working sixty plus hours a week did not leave much time to date, and the fact that she was the director of the CIA tended to intimidate men a bit.
“Now you’re the comedian,” Rapp said.
Kennedy nodded. She was wearing a stylish yet conservative brown jacket with matching pants. She crossed her left leg over her right and asked, “What’s on your mind?”
Rapp plopped down in one of the side chairs. “I need you to talk me off the ledge.”
“Oh no…what now?”
“Ross.”
Kennedy closed the file on her desk. Conflict was a part of her job, especially post 9/11. A power grab was afoot, and she needed to be very careful. She had high hopes for a smooth relationship with the new director of National Intelligence. She respected Rapp, but his insolent attitude, and bull-in-a-china-shop demeanor, could easily put her and Ross at odds. “I would think he hasn’t been at the job long enough to cross you.”
“Well, you’re wrong.”
“What did he do?”
“For starters he had one of his people call over to the Pentagon and request Scott Coleman’s personnel file.”
“And?”
“The Pentagon sent over the sanitized version, and Ross didn’t buy it. He or one of his deputies called back and tried to browbeat some captain into handing over the full file, especially anything involving any work he may have done for the CIA. The captain directed them to the Joint Special Operations Command, who in turn kicked it all the way up to General Flood.”
“Did Flood give them what they wanted?”
“Are you kidding me? The only people who are more pissed than us about National Intelligence is the Pentagon. Flood told them, in a not so polite way, that unless he got a phone call from the president telling him to release the file they could go to you know where.”
Kennedy in fact did. General Flood was in his final months as chairman of the Joint Chiefs and he seemed to be taking great pleasure in telling certain people exactly how he felt about them. “Did they go to the president?”
“Not that I know of, and I doubt they’ll bother.”
“Why would Ross be so interested in Coleman?” Kennedy set her reading glasses down on her desk. “Has he been up to anything that I don’t know about?”
“No. He’s clean.”
“The timing of this is not good.”
“I agree, and there’s one more problem. The IRS showed up on Coleman’s doorstep yesterday. They want to see all of his books.”
Kennedy brought her hands together and formed a pyramid under her chin. The frown lines on her forehead deepened. “What in the hell is he up to?”
“He’s either picked up some intel that we’re reconstituting the Orion Team or he’s on a fishing expedition.”
Kennedy’s mind ran through a half dozen possibilities. She wondered if Ross would be so bold as to have her office bugged. As paranoid as it sounded, it wouldn’t be the first time that an intelligence overlord had decided to spy on the home team. Ross had been on the job less than a month. She doubted he could move that fast, but she still made a note to have Delgado’s group sweep the office.
“My gut,” she said, “tells me a fishing expedition.”
“What if we’re being set up?”
“By whom?”
“Senator Hartsburg.”
Kennedy shook her head. “No. If Hartsburg wanted to fry us he wouldn’t go through Ross. I think it’s a fishing expedition.”
“Why?”
She thought about it for a while and said, “Mark Ross is a good man. He’s not out to destroy us, or Coleman for that fact.”
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t share your confidence.”
“I think he has a natural distrust for the operations side of the business. He comes from the intel side, and guys like you and Coleman make him nervous.”
Rapp frowned. “Why?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say he thinks you’re going to embarrass him. He’s the new guy in charge, and a lot of people are hoping he falls flat on his face.”
“Again, what in the hell does that have to do with me?”
Kennedy sighed. Rapp was very good at his job, but he was a complete neophyte when it came to the politics of Washington. “Thank God much of what you’ve done is classified. You’ve had an amazing track record, but one of these times, I fear, you’re going to have an operation head south and you’re going to land all of us in the middle of a monumental scandal.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
She shook her head. “You know you have my confidence.”
Rapp nodded. “Well, if you want to win, you have to play the game. We can’t just sit on the sidelines and hope they start liking us.”
“I agree.” She reached out and grabbed a pink message slip from her desk. “I’ll figure out a strategy for Ross, in the meantime we’d better put your project on hold.”
This was not what Rapp wanted to hear. “For how long?”
“I don’t know. Give me
at least until the end of the week.”
Rapp had no intention of slowing down. He would just have to be a little more careful. “What about the IRS?”
“I’ll see what I can do, but once these audits are started things can get tricky.”
Rapp leaned forward, placing both elbows on his knees. “I want the IRS off Scott Coleman’s back by tomorrow morning, or I am going to make someone’s life miserable. Every time we’ve needed him to handle some shitty job he’s been there for us, and he hasn’t complained once.”
She knew Rapp was serious and she knew better than to argue with him. “I’ll do my best.” She held up the pink slip of paper. “Onto another subject. I got a call from your old friend Sayyid.” Kennedy was referring to Ali Kyer, the head of the Jordanian Intelligence Service.
Rapp immediately wondered what he had done wrong. Sayyid knew how to get hold of him directly. If he was going over his head to Kennedy, there was a good chance he’d pissed someone off. “And how is my old friend?” Rapp asked cautiously.
“He’s fine. He sends his regards. He says you are no fun now that you are married.” Kennedy’s left eyebrow arched in a curious expression. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means now that I’m married I’m no fun anymore.”
“Lovely. It’s good to hear you’ve settled down. Anyway…Sayyid wanted to pass on a bit of intel. Apparently you’re still very popular in Saudi Arabia.”
“Good. Are they planning a parade for me?”
“Not quite. The opposite is more like it…a price has been placed on your head.”
Rapp leaned back and crossed his legs. “By who?”
“We don’t know. Sayyid is looking into it.”
“Is that all?”
“For the moment.”
Rapp thought about it for a few seconds while Kennedy observed him. This wasn’t the first time he’d been on someone’s hit list, and he doubted it would be the last. He looked at his watch. “I’d better get over to the CTC for the morning briefing.”
Kennedy tilted her head and regarded him. “Doesn’t this news worry you?”
Rapp shrugged. “Irene, there’s always going to be some crazy fucker out there who wants to kill me. This is nothing new.”
Kennedy nodded. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I always am,” Rapp replied. “I always am.”
“And promise me you won’t hesitate to ask for security if you notice anything out of the ordinary.”
Rapp stood and buttoned his suit coat. “Absolutely.” He started for the door and then thought of something else. He stopped and asked, “Irene, would you do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
“Would you let the Secret Service know about this? I’d appreciate it if they’d keep an eye on Anna as she’s coming and going from the White House.”
She was already planning on it. “I’ll call Jack Warch right away.”
“Thank you.” Rapp left the director’s office…his mind already jumping ahead…going into tactical mode. He’d feel much better when the new house was finished. The damn thing was going to be more secure than Fort Knox. The crazies could come after him all they wanted once he moved into the place. Unless they brought some heavy explosives, there was no way they were getting in, and if they did, well…he’d have a few surprises waiting for them.
21
PARIS, FRANCE
H e had made almost no effort to talk her into taking the job, knowing any such attempt had the potential to drive her further away. That night he simply stopped talking and let her begin to sort it out in her mind. They’d made love, forgetting about Mitch Rapp and killing for a while. When they were done, there was no mention of the German or Rapp or anything else, for that matter. They’d simply fallen asleep in each other’s arms. The next morning they sat through a pot of coffee and some fresh fruit without a mention of it. They read the paper, smoked a cigarette, and literally didn’t say a word. He recognized it for what it was. Claudia was not playing a game with him. She was not waiting for him to make the first move. She was simply thinking it through in a very thorough manner.
That was Claudia Morrell. She was the general, the field marshal, the tactician. Louie was good at the hunt and the kill. He was gifted beyond measure with the instinct to know when to press forward and when to retreat. He had a sense of the overall picture, but his attitude was inevitably one of invincibility. Claudia’s strength was in the details. She was better at analyzing the risk whereas Louie thought anything could be overcome with the right amount of skill and determination. She knew when to walk away, while he was sometimes driven by the challenge. A dark, mad part of him had actually hoped the German would ask him to kill the American president. He had no feelings about the president one way or another, it was simply a challenge, a test of his skill, something that would be discussed for hundreds of years and maybe longer. To kill the most protected man in the world and get away with it, that would be the ultimate test. He’d dreamt of it. He was an old man giving a deathbed confession. Giving details that only he would know. Maybe even telling them where he’d hid the rifle. That was the only way to kill a man so heavily protected, that or a bomb, but bombs were clumsy and ended up killing too many innocent people. They were the easy way out, not the way of a talented assassin.
Rapp, however, was an entirely different matter. Despite Claudia’s worries, Louie knew he had a huge advantage, and there was nothing cocky about recognizing this. Surprise was on his side. He knew if the roles were reversed he probably wouldn’t stand a chance against a man of Rapp’s talents and significant resources. Any disadvantage he was dealt by having to operate in Rapp’s backyard was negated by the fact that he had gone to high school in Washington while his father had been ambassador. Louie’s Americanized English was flawless. Despite Claudia’s reservations, he was very optimistic about pulling off this job and simply fading away into early retirement. Well, he was a little less optimistic about the fading away part, but he hadn’t shared that with Claudia.
After she’d finished two cups of coffee she closed the paper and said, “Do you want to know what I think?”
“I’ve been waiting all morning.”
“The German is working for the Saudis. That’s where his contacts are. I don’t like the Saudis, but I like the idea of settling down.” She paused and fixed him with a very serious look. “But I’m not so sure you do.”
“That’s not true.”
“What are you going to do? Lie in the sun every day and drink beer…” She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Claudia, we are going to be extremely wealthy. I will do whatever I want.”
She studied him with open skepticism. “I want you to really think about this. I want children, and I want to put all of this behind us. Killing people was not what I wanted to do with my life.”
She extended her arms and motioned toward the dirty walls of the run-down apartment. “No more assignments, no more moving from place to place. I want to stop.”
“So do I.” Louie knew the important thing was to keep agreeing. Like an alcoholic, he had the desire to stop. The benefit was undeniable, but he just didn’t know if he would be able to resist the call of the hunt.
His answer, and her need to believe in the possibility of a different life, was enough for her. “Here is what we are going to do. I don’t trust the German. He would throw us overboard in a second, and as far as the money goes he is a shyster. We know he’s acting on behalf of the Saudis, and it’s my guess that he is not working for the government but rather some individual or group. Either way,” she shrugged, “they have deep pockets.”
“I would agree.”
“Good. I am going to call Herr Abel and tell him our fee is ten million.”
Louie didn’t like changing the deal. “But I already told him seven.”
“I know you did, but Saudis are not rational when it comes to money. They are impulsive. If they are willing to pa
y seven they are willing to pay ten…trust me.”
“Why not ask for fifteen, then?”
“That’s too big of a jump.” She reached out and patted his hand. “You’re good, darling, but not that good. If we demand fifteen million, Abel will go find someone else.”
“All right. Ten million is the number. What if they say no?”
“They won’t.”
She was right. Louie sat there at the kitchen table and watched Claudia turn on her phone and call Abel. It didn’t go well at first. Louie could hear the German’s voice bellowing from the tiny speaker of the mobile phone. They had a deal. Seven million was the agreed-upon sum. He said he would find someone else. Claudia wished him luck, pressed the end button, and turned her phone off. Fifteen minutes later she turned her phone back on and there were three messages from the German. She played them back and listened to Abel negotiate with himself. The first message he agreed to go to eight, during the second call he went to nine, and finally on the third call he agreed to ten million but not a dollar more. Claudia called him back and told him she would e-mail him the wiring instructions. As soon as the five-million-dollar deposit was in their hands they would start.
By midafternoon of that same day they received verification that one million dollars had been deposited in each of the five separate banks that Claudia had requested. The German appeared eager for them to get the job done, and they were more than happy to oblige. Staying in Paris, with the German there, was not a good idea. Abel was too sloppy to be trusted, and if an intelligence agency was tracking him, they were only one step away from Louie and Claudia, so the first order of business was to sanitize, dismantle, and ditch both Claudia’s phone and his since they had made enough calls to each other that it would be easy to link the two. After the phones were disposed of, they collected their meager belongings and left the rented apartment, never to return. Claudia called the landlady from a pay phone and told her there was a family emergency and they would not be returning. With any luck the woman would have the place rented within the week.