by Vince Flynn
“I missed you.” She kissed him on the lips.
Gould smiled and took his foot off the brake. “Are you hungry?”
“Famished.”
“I know of a good place. I think you’ll like it.”
The operational rules had been set. They only spoke English. While Gould’s was so good he seemed like a native, Claudia wasn’t as proficient. Like him, she was traveling with a Canadian passport. At least for the remainder of the day. Tomorrow morning they would change identities yet again.
She nodded. “No problem crossing the border?”
“No,” he said, “and you?”
“Landed in Miami and cleared customs without too much difficulty.”
“Did they fingerprint you?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Gould nodded. He thought they would, but at least the new system wasn’t in sync yet. The airports had months of backlogged fingerprints that needed to be input and correlated. “The money?” he asked.
“No problem. It’s safe.” That’s where Claudia had been. Making sure the five million dollars was sliced and diced, moved and shuffled and then put back together in the vault of a boutique financial institution on a beautiful island in a very warm and sunny part of the world. Claudia was very good at such things. She had been in the banking business before they had decided to strike out on their own. She kept up on all the laws, regulations, and most importantly, which banks knew how to guard their clients’ privacy in the face of an overzealous war on terror.
“What’s the plan?” she asked as the car picked up speed.
“Downtown.”
She looked at him sideways with a confused expression.
“I thought they lived out on the Chesapeake Bay.”
“They do, but we don’t know exactly where, and it would be foolish to start poking around. If he hears that strangers are asking questions, he’s likely to come looking for us.”
The explanation made sense to her. “But why are we going downtown?”
“Because that is where she works. We’ll check into our hotel. Have a nice meal. Make love and then sleep.”
“Tomorrow?”
“We’ll do a little sightseeing. Get rid of this car, and if all goes well…we’ll follow her home.”
26
WASHINGTON, DC
T hey were to meet at the Capitol Grill. It was one of their favorite restaurants. Bulletproof, Rapp liked to call it. The place had yet to let them down. Order anything on the menu and it was great. It came out hot or cold depending on how it was supposed to be served. They covered the surf and the turf equally well, which was important because she ate fish and he ate steak. He actually ate anything, but at these prices he preferred red meat.
Rapp was on time. She was late. This was nothing new, but it unnerved him to no end. They’d gone round and round over her lack of punctuality and had a few pretty big blowouts. Even under normal circumstances it would have bothered him, but their relationship was not normal. She was a TV correspondent who received at least one stalker letter a month. Nothing unusual really. At least not for women in her line of work. Middle-aged single men who undoubtedly had deep issues with their mothers. Voyeuristic sickos who got off on writing down their dirty thoughts. Every attractive woman at every TV station across the country had to deal with it to some degree or another. The good news was that ninety-nine percent of these perverts never graduated beyond the letter-writing stage. The remaining one percent gave Rapp cause for concern, but they were not the real source of his worries.
Rapp was a marked man with a price on his head. Fatwas, religious findings by Islamic clerics, had been handed down demanding that he be killed. This in part fed his desire to see men like Khalil resting in a pool of their own blood. They had entered the fray with their bellicose mouths and soft bodies. They were men who had never seen battle, and never would. Men who took perverse joy in inflaming the hearts of young Muslim boys, sending others to do work they had neither the skill nor the courage to perform. Those boys, and the ones who had grown into men, were the people Rapp worried about every time Anna was late.
Lovely Anna Rielly was a study in contrasts. Her delicate features and enchanting green eyes conveyed a sense of classic beauty. Just beneath the surface, though, lurked the tough street-smart daughter of a Chicago cop. Rielly had grown up with four brothers, three of whom had followed in their father’s footsteps. The fourth brother became a lawyer. His choice of profession and Anna’s created a bit of a divide among the siblings. The three brothers who donned the uniform referred to Anna and the lawyer sibling as the enemy. True to their Irish blood, the political debates were heated and shit was deep. As was their love for each other.
This colorful upbringing on Chicago’s South Side added tenacity to her beauty and smarts. Anna did not like defeat, and she knew not how to retreat. It was a very potent mix for a reporter. Rapp sought to hone these natural instincts, and hopefully teach her to detect trouble before it was upon her. She teased him about the Dictaphone he bought her, but eventually came around to the wisdom of the device. “If you think someone is following you,” he told her, “record the license plate and I’ll run it.” She’d seen Rapp do this himself at least once a week. He put her through a defensive driving course, and taught her how to shoot both pistols and shotguns.
She was pretty good with both. Since she’d never shot before, there were no bad habits to break. Unlike most guys she held the weapon without trying to choke it. She had a smooth steady trigger pull and didn’t anticipate the shot. She just put the front site on the target and fired over and over. How good would she be if ever confronted with a real situation? It was hard to tell. The human body had automatic survival mechanisms. Chief among them was the release of adrenaline. At the first sign of danger the body released it before certain parts of the brain even knew what was going on. Adrenaline levels spiked in preparation for either of two choices—fight or flight. This is where it got tricky. It was where people came unglued, and it happened when they chose to do neither. They froze and were hit with the aftershock of the adrenaline hangover leaving them soggy and depleted. The only way to prepare someone for this was to practice over and over. Make all of the motions second nature. First work on the fundamentals, stance, grip, front sight, and trigger pull, and then work on marksmanship, and then after a solid foundation was built move on to situational training.
He had Anna practice drawing the gun from her purse and firing. They worked on both the left and the right hand. He taught her how to draw and fire at close range as if she were struggling with someone. How to reach out and punch the gun into the person’s ribcage and let loose a round. He taught her to get in tune with her natural instincts. “If you’re walking to your car at night and something doesn’t seem right,” he’d say to her, “unzip your purse and put your hand around the grip.” Rapp got her a permit to carry and made sure every time she left the house she had the Smith and Wesson .38 AirLight revolver. It was light, had a short barrel and a relatively small hammer. It was very user friendly, and the ideal personal defense weapon for someone in Anna’s position. He was obsessed with her well-being, and with giving her the edge that he himself possessed through years and years of training. He never worried about his own safety. Only hers.
Rapp was situated in the back of the restaurant in a corner booth. His drink arrived, and a short while after that the calamari was set on the table by one of the servers. It was the best calamari in town. Rapp did not wait for Anna. He was famished and surly, so he dug in. After devouring half the plate, he paused and took a sip of his whisky. He chased it with some water, looked toward the front door with his dark, almost black eyes, and shook his head in frustration. She was now twenty-five minutes late, and his mood was getting more rank by the minute. She was going to give him an ulcer.
Add to his wife’s habitual tardiness his earlier meeting with the new director of National Intelligence, and it was no wonder he was in such a foul state. He’
d been tempted earlier in the day to pay the president an unannounced visit and tell him to get rid of Ross before the man really stepped in it, but Rapp dismissed the idea almost immediately. It was naïve of him to think the president would do something so drastic based on one blunder. Gone, in Washington, were the days of people being shamed from public office and slinking out of town under cover of darkness. Now people hung on for weeks, sometimes months, while their media and publicity flacks tried to spin their way out of the problem. The media, especially the cable news outlets, loved this.
Rapp sincerely hoped Ross would heed his warning. For everyone’s sake. Something told him, however, it was wishful thinking. He’d dealt with this type of man before. Washington was filled with them. They didn’t like losing. Ross would be licking his wounds right now, and trying to figure out a way to get even, or more likely, bury him. Kennedy was the obvious target, but Ross would have to be careful. He would still be afraid of Rapp carrying through on his threat and rightly so. If the president caught Ross wasting his time and resources following Scott Coleman he would be furious. It wasn’t enough to get the man fired, but it would be enough to provoke some genuine anger.
Rapp would have to prepare contingencies, find some additional leverage on Ross, and he would have to tell Coleman to be extra careful. An easy move for Ross at this point would be to anonymously put the FBI onto Coleman’s trail. Rapp should have covered that during their meeting. He’d have to call Ross’s right-hand man, Gordon, and make it crystal clear what was at stake. Gordon at least seemed like someone he could deal with.
Kennedy was another problem. She would not be happy when she found out what he’d done. He’d put off telling her all day. His excuse to himself was that the timing was never right, but that was lame. He just didn’t want to tell her. She was the one who would be dealing with Ross on a day-to-day basis, though. He’d do it in the morning.
He was reaching for his phone to call his wife when she entered the restaurant. A mini commotion ensued as the mass of men in the bar area turned to get a look. Several of them cut her off before she could get to the restaurant. Rapp was uttering profanities under his breath as he watched. Reporters, especially the TV variety, were celebrities in D.C.
She would have turned heads anyway, Rapp thought.
Anna Rielly was full of life. She had a smile that lit up the room, and a whole lot of confidence to boot. She carried herself like someone who knew exactly what she wanted and that was no front. Anna really did know what she wanted and she almost always got it.
Anna shook hands as she moved through the crowd quickly, but politely. She was good that way. She flashed her infectious smile, tossed her hair about, and laughed, but kept herself quartered at all times. She never let them fully engage her and suck her into a potentially lengthy conversation. She kept smiling and nodding and then pointed at her watch and then her husband located in the far corner of the restaurant.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized as she finally strode up to the table. “I was walking out the door when Sam called.” Sam was her producer in New York. “He wanted to go over tomorrow’s live shot for the Today show, and then he just kept talking and talking.” She made a puppetlike gesture with her hand, mimicking the chattering motion of a person’s mouth.
Rapp stood and kissed her on the cheek. His anger was already melting away, but he couldn’t let it go entirely. “It was nice of you to call.”
“I know,” she said in defense, “but by the time I got off the phone with Sam, Liz called me on my cell, so I just grabbed my bag and left.”
Liz O’Rourke was Anna’s best friend. He took her jacket and hung it on the hook at the end of the booth. Anna scooted in across the bench and he joined her on the same side. Rapp considered pointing out that she could have called Sam back on her mobile phone, but knew they’d simply end up in a fight. She’d just say he was the last person who should be complaining after all the nights she’d lain awake wondering if he was dead. It was better to just let it go.
“So,” she said, “would you mind telling me what’s going on?”
“What do you mean?” he asked. He had no idea what she was talking about.
“Well, when I was leaving work Jack Warch escorted me to my car.” She looked at him with her unwavering green eyes.
Rapp tossed his head to the side as if to say oh that, but nonetheless tried to downplay it. “Irene got a phone call from one of our allies. Supposedly some crazy Wahhabi has been shooting his mouth off that he wants to kill me.” Rapp said this with as much gravity as if he was announcing to her that they were out of her favorite Chardonnay.
“Lovely.” She sat back and folded her arms.
The waiter appeared with a glass of wine that Rapp had already ordered for her.
As soon as the man was out of earshot Anna said, “You must be pretty worried if you called Jack.”
Rapp considered this for a moment. He didn’t want to alarm her, but at the same time he didn’t want to make light of it. “I’m no more, or less, concerned than I normally would be. I had to talk to Jack about something else today, so I mentioned it to him. He’s offered before, so I decided it was a good idea to take him up on it.”
She looked at him with her reporter’s eyes, trying to detect how forthright he was being.
“Honey, I’m serious. I don’t want you to be alarmed, but at the same time I want you to be aware.”
“Fair enough,” she said after a few seconds.
The conversation turned to the more mundane topic of how their days had gone. Rapp neglected to mention his meeting with Ross. She ordered the sea bass, and Rapp ordered the New York Strip medium rare. He switched to red wine with his meal and Anna continued to nurse her glass of Chardonnay. The fish and the steak were perfect. She nearly finished hers, and he made it through half the juicy steak. Rapp had the other half boxed up for Shirley, their beloved mutt. The waiter approached with a dessert menu, and to Rapp’s surprise Anna took it. She never ate dessert. After the waiter left he teased her about this, and she played coy. Rapp let it go for the moment and asked about the O’Rourkes, their friends. Anna beamed with pride over how cute their little baby boy was, her godson, little Gabriel Seamus O’Rourke.
“I had lunch with Liz and precious Gabe today.” She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath through her nose. “I could just eat that little guy.”
Rapp smiled. Liz O’Rourke and Anna had been journalism majors together at the University of Michigan. They were impossibly close. They talked every day, at least once, and giggled like grade schoolers when they got together. Anna inhaled little Gabe every chance she got. Rapp had just watched. It wasn’t that he didn’t like babies, it was simply that when they were really little, in that infant stage, they seemed so frail. He could tell, though, by watching his wife, that the siren of maternity was calling to her. Rapp had asked her if it was time and without hesitation she had replied, “Not yet. Soon, but not yet.”
The dessert arrived. It was some triple chocolate mound of sin with a hunk of ice cream on top. It had to be over 2,000 calories. Rapp stared at it in awe as his wife dug in. After three bites she set her spoon down and said, “I have some big news.”
Rapp cringed, and thought, Please don’t tell me you’re getting promoted and they’re moving you to New York.
“Do you want to guess?”
“You got a promotion.”
“No.” She smiled. “I’m pregnant.”
Rapp didn’t move for several seconds. His mind was trying to cross the divide. As far as he knew, his wife was on the Pill.
“I know,” she said reading his expression, “but I took the test twice, plus I’m late.”
“But how?”
She shrugged. “It says right on the birth control package, ‘Ninety-nine percent effective.’I guess we fall into the one percent.”
They’d talked about having kids almost from the day they’d met. They both wanted at least two, but Anna was in no rush. There we
re certain things she wanted to do careerwise first. Rapp looked at her carefully. “Are you okay with this?”
“Of course I am! Are you kidding me?”
He breathed a sigh of relief.
“Are you okay with this?” she asked a bit tentatively.
Rapp looked at her angelic face. He could see now that she was worried about his reaction. He reached out with his hand and gently held the side of her face. “I couldn’t be happier.”
27
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
A bel sat quietly at his desk. His office was on the third floor of a building built just prior to the start of WWI. The building, like much of Vienna, was a work of art. The immaculate baroque structure was made out of stone and marble. The roof was a patina covered copper and the fifteen-foot-tall plaster ceilings were decorated in ornate relief. It was well ordered, occupied mostly by business professionals. From his window Abel looked out onto Parliament and its monument to Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare. My, how mankind has changed in one century, he thought. No society that he knew of today would associate wisdom with war, let alone erect a statue in homage to the goddess of the latter. Abel continued looking at the golden-leaf headdress of the Greek goddess. Where was it all headed? he wondered.
Great civilizations rose and fell as surely as the tides. The Egyptians, the Incas, the Mayans, the Greeks, the Persians, the Romans, the Mongol empire, the Ottoman empire all came and went. The Austro-Hungarian empire, the French, the British, the Russians, and the Nazis would someday merit only a footnote. Who knew what waited for the Americans? The other superpower, the Soviet Union, had lasted less than a hundred years with their grand experiment of communism. A blink as far as history was concerned. If Abel had to guess, America’s preeminence on the world stage would last no more than another hundred years. The country had too many rights and too much wealth. Not enough sacrifice. Too much selfishness. The civilizations that had made their mark did so through brutality or great self-sacrifice by the populace, and often both. The Chinese would become the next sole superpower. They were hungry for change. Such long-range forecasts were always interesting to him, but in the here and now he had more pressing issues.