by Vince Flynn
“If this thing blows up in my face, it will not have been the right decision.”
“I will not let that happen, sir.”
“How?” The president sounded skeptical.
“We are making some progress in finding the leak.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“What have you found?”
“We think it might be someone at the State Department.”
“How high up?”
Instead of answering the question, Stansfield said, “Irene told me about the meeting you had the other day with the German ambassador.”
Hayes leaned back in his chair. “And?”
“How have things been between you and Secretary Midleton?”
After thinking about it for a moment, the president replied, “I don’t think he ever got it in his head that I’m the boss.”
“He thinks you’re both still colleagues back in the Senate.”
“Yes. You’ve seen it before?”
“Many times. It’s strange that it always seems to be that position more than the others.”
“Secretary of state?”
“Yes. For some reason they tend to think of themselves as the most important person in each administration.”
“I should have known better. Charles has always fancied himself as American royalty. When I won the election, I owed him. He had raised a lot of money for the campaign, and I knew he would be an easy confirmation. He was my first nominee, and I wanted to get it right.”
“You’re not the first, sir.”
“And I’m sure I won’t be the last.”
“No, you won’t.”
“What have you found out?” asked the president.
Stansfield had thought this next part through and was determined to get his way. He had the gift of all great tacticians. He could focus on the smallest detail and never lose sight of the overall picture. Over the last few days, he had seen a pattern developing. Like reconnaissance photos before a battle, he was beginning to see what the enemies’ objectives were.
“Sir, I have decided that for your own good, I am going to keep you in the dark about what I know so far and what I think is going to happen over the next week or so.”
President Hayes looked miffed. “I’m not so sure I like that idea.”
“I knew you wouldn’t, sir, but it’s for your own good. If things go wrong, I want you to have complete deniability.”
“I’m afraid that will be impossible.”
“No it won’t, sir. You will be able to blame the whole thing on me. I will have the documents prepared, and I will leave them in Irene’s care.”
President Hayes was more than surprised. After staring at Stansfield for a while, he asked, “Why would you do that?”
“I am about to die, sir. It was I who counseled you to use the third option, and it is I who will take the blame if things don’t work out.”
“I’m not so sure about this, Thomas.”
“I am, sir. I think things are going to get very ugly.”
“How ugly?”
Stansfield thought about his answer for a second. “Mitch has made some progress in finding who it was that set him up in Germany.”
“And?”
“And I’ve given him orders to follow that trail as high as it goes.”
The president cleared his throat. “What are his orders once he finds them?”
“Deniability, Mr. President. You don’t want me to answer that.”
Hayes leaned forward and in a whisper said, “Thomas, if this thing ends up at the feet of Charles Midleton, you can’t just simply have Rapp kill him.”
“Sir, it is my sincere hope that this trail does not go that far.”
NINE BLOCKS AWAY from the White House, a taxi pulled into the drive of the Four Seasons Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue and 28th Street. A doorman dressed in black from head to toe opened the back door of the cab and extended a gloved white hand for the passenger. A woman with shimmering auburn hair emerged from the cab, and heads turned. It was difficult for Donatella Rahn to hide her beauty. She was wearing a simple black Armani pants suit. Nothing fancy, nothing too sexy; it was perfect for thirteen and a half hours of transatlantic travel. Donatella had left Milan shortly after noon. The eight-hour flight to New York’s JFK landed at 2:34 in the afternoon, local time. It took about an hour to clear customs and then another hour to get into the city. Donatella stopped in Manhattan just long enough to say hello to a few of her fashion contacts and grab some things, and then it was off to Grand Central Station. It was 8:30 in the evening by the time her train pulled into Union Station just two long blocks north of the United States Capitol.
Donatella was tired, but she could handle it. She’d been through a hell of a lot in her life. She didn’t let simple things like fatigue get to her. She walked casually across the expansive lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel and ignored the looks she was receiving from men and women alike. She had stopped noticing them years ago. She approached the front desk, where an Asian woman was standing ready to punch the new arrival’s information into the hotel’s computer.
“Hello.” Donatella spoke perfect English.
“Good evening, ma’am. Are you checking in?”
“Yes. The name is Mary Jones.” Donatella extracted a credit card from her purse and slid it across the counter. She also had a California driver’s license with the same name. She had picked them up in Manhattan at a safe deposit box she kept.
“You’ll be with us for four nights, Ms. Jones.”
“That’s right.” Donatella signed the charge slip with her own pen and took the room key. The woman pointed to the elevators and informed the guest that a bellhop would be up with her luggage in a moment. Donatella thanked the woman and took the elevator to the fifth floor. Once in her room, she grabbed a sunglasses case from her purse and opened it. Inside was a small countermeasure device designed to detect RF transmitters, tape recorders, and AC line carrier transmitters. Donatella swept the entire room. She didn’t bother checking the phone, though. She would not be using it.
When the bellhop arrived, she gave him a five-dollar bill and then locked and chained the door. The clock next to the king-size bed told her it was 9:41, which meant it was almost three in the morning in Milan. Sleep would have to wait. Donatella took off her Armani suit and hung it in the closet. From her suitcase, she grabbed a pair of jeans, brown boots, and a large wool sweater. She dressed quickly and put a faded red Eddie Bauer baseball hat on her head, pulling her ponytail out the back. From her purse, she grabbed a pair of small binoculars, her StarTAC Trimode phone, and her Heckler & Koch HK4 pistol. The compact gun carried eight .32-caliber rounds and was easily concealable under her bulky sweater.
Donatella left the hotel, heading west on M Street for several blocks and then taking a right onto 30th Street. The evening air was chilly but pleasant. It felt great after spending most of the day on a plane and a train. On the flight over from Milan, she had carefully studied the dossier of her target. The choice of the Four Seasons Hotel was an easy one. It was centrally located between the man’s home and office. Donatella took her time walking up the steep hill. She was canvassing the neighborhood as she had been taught by the Mossad.
Donatella Rahn was not a very conflicted woman, at least not when compared to the person she had been in her twenties. At thirty-eight, she had learned to let certain things go. The Mossad, however, was a different story. They had turned her into something she had never been and in all likelihood would never have become. The vaunted Israeli intelligence service had turned her into a spy and an assassin, and it had not been of her free will.
As Donatella’s modeling career had taken off, so had her drug use. By the age of twenty-one, she was a full-fledged coke fiend. On a modeling job in Tel Aviv, she had been busted trying to bring an ounce of coke into the country. She was in a jail cell, strung-out and freaking out, when a man named Ben Freidman came to her and offered her a way to avoid going t
o prison. The man told her he would help her kick her drug habit, and after a period of time she could return to Milan. He also assured her that her release had nothing to do with sex.
Not exactly being of sound mind and desperately wanting to avoid jail, Donatella agreed. The next day, she found herself strapped to a bed in a medical facility shaking and sweating from withdrawal. By the time the first week was over, they had helped her shake the habit. It would not be the last time they would do so. They indoctrinated her slowly at first, teaching her information-gathering techniques and then self-defense. She was sent away after that first month feeling grateful and, for the first time in her life, as if she had a real purpose. They had helped her understand her Jewish roots, helped her understand the plight of her people and their need to defend themselves against those who had sworn to rid all Jews from the face of the earth.
This was just the beginning. At first, her assignments were simple, nothing more than observing a certain individual or passing on information as she jetted around the world, but as the years passed, things got more serious. She had four more relapses into drug use, and with each one they drew her in a little more. The training changed. At first, it was done under the guise of self-defense, but it slowly became apparent that something else was going on.
Colonel Ben Freidman of the feared Mossad had become her teacher and her protector. He was one of the two men she had ever met in her life whom she could trust completely. The other hurt too much to think about.
Donatella had to be honest with herself, though. From the beginning, she had enjoyed it immensely. The thrill of stalking another human being and killing them was like nothing she had ever experienced. It was better than any drug, even better than sex. Donatella Rahn had an addictive personality, and she couldn’t stop. She enjoyed her work, and she was paid extremely well.
As Donatella hiked up the heaved cobblestone sidewalk, she did so knowing who she was. She knew it might seem like a small thing to most people but not to her. She had spent her entire life confused, searching for a father she never knew, and eventually hoping she would never find him. And now, she had finally figured out who she was and where she was headed. To her, that was a very big thing.
THE CROWN VICTORIA rocked gently as it rolled down the old county road in rural Maryland. The familiar landmarks gave Rielly some comfort. They had just spent more than an hour driving all around the city. At one point, Rielly thought she might get carsick. She didn’t know her way around the city that well and had been lost five minutes after they’d picked her up. There were a couple of times where she thought things looked familiar, but she couldn’t be sure. The experience was very disorienting, and after a while she found it best to sit back, crack her window, and close her eyes.
The two agents seemed competent enough. Special Agent Pelachuk had told her when they got into the car that they were going to have to take some standard precautions to make sure they weren’t being followed. Special Agent Salem, the blond one, was doing the driving. He didn’t say much. Early on, she had asked them where they were taking her. She was happy to find out that they were going to Mitch’s house. Rielly asked if Mitch was already there, and Pelachuk told her he didn’t know.
Rielly grew eager with anticipation as they turned off the country road and onto the street that would take them to Mitch’s. There were no streetlights this far from the city. The communities around the Chesapeake Bay had a tendency to want things to stay as they were a hundred years ago. Building permits had to be paraded past one inspector after another, and variances were rarely granted. Something as modern as a street lamp would be a blight on the landscape. Rielly knew this was one of the reasons Mitch had moved this far out. He loved his alone time, and out here he could get it. As Rielly looked out the window, the only things she could make out were the lights of several farmhouses off in the distance.
A few minutes later, the car slowed to ten miles an hour, and the two agents stuck their chins over the dashboard in an effort to find the right address.
From the back seat, Rielly said, “It’s the third one on the left.” As they got a little closer, she added, “That one right there by the white mailbox.”
The car turned and started down the long driveway. Rielly immediately noticed that all the lights were off in the house, and her heart sank. Mitch wasn’t there yet. Salem turned the car around, driving on the lawn in the process, and parked in front of the garage facing the street.
Neither agent made an effort to get out of the car, so Rielly asked, “What are we doing?”
“We’re waiting,” answered Pelachuk.
“For what?”
As innocently as possible, he said, “I don’t have a key.”
“Well, I do.”
Pelachuk looked at his partner. “What do you think?” “How long are we going to be waiting?”
“I don’t know. An hour…maybe two.”
“I say we wait inside if she has a key.”
Pelachuk looked back at Rielly. “Would you like to go inside?”
“Yes.” Rielly reached for the door handle.
“Hold on a minute. Let me go check things out first, and then we’ll go in.” Turning back to his partner, he said, “Anything funny happens, get her out of here and don’t worry about me.”
Special Agent Pelachuk got out of the sedan and closed the door. Standing next to the car, in plain view of Rielly, he drew his weapon and disappeared around the side of the house. When he reached the deck in back, he looked down at the dock briefly and then put his gun away. The man knew no one was there. They’d had the house under surveillance since Monday. Grabbing his digital phone, he punched in a number and held the tiny encrypted phone to his ear.
After three rings, a voice said, “Hello.”
“We have the girl, and we’re at the rendezvous point.”
“Does she suspect anything?”
“No. She even offered to let us in. Just like you thought.”
“Good. Don’t touch anything when you get inside. We have no idea what kind of surprises he might have.”
“All right. Anything else?”
“What are you doing about her phone?”
“We’re jamming it from the mobile unit in the trunk.”
“Good. Keep me informed if anything changes.”
“All right.” The man posing as a federal agent ended the call and put the phone away. After they took care of this reporter, and whoever her boyfriend was, he would have to convince the Professor to let him go after Gus Villaume again. Jeff Duser looked out at the blackness on the other side of the deck railing and thought about how profitable things had gotten since they started working for the Professor. He decided he would kill Villaume for free. It would be fun.
Peter Cameron was sitting on the long brown leather couch in Senator Clark’s study. He closed his flip phone and set it on the coffee table in front of him. With a huge grin spreading across his bearded face, he leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “They have Rielly, and she suspects nothing.”
Clark took a moment to look up and acknowledge Cameron. The senator was sitting at his desk, wearing his reading glasses and a pair of latex gloves. Resting on the surface before him was Anna Rielly’s journal. A few days ago, Clark had begun to wonder if divine intervention were responsible for allowing Rapp to escape his executioner in Germany. Now things were falling into place more perfectly than he ever could have dreamed. Far better even than his original plan.
“Are they at Rapp’s house?”
“Yes, and she’s going to let them in just like you thought.”
“Good.”
“Are you going to tell me the rest of your plan?”
Clark closed the journal and placed it back in the bag. He took off the gloves and set them on his desk. With drink in hand, he walked over and sat in the leather chair across from Cameron. “What does Mitch Rapp want more than anything in the world right now?”
“Anna Rielly.”
“Wrong. He doesn’t know we have her yet.”
Cameron thought about the question and shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Clark pointed at the Professor with his drink. “He wants you, Peter.”
Cameron licked his lips. “So what’s your plan?”
“It’s simple. You are both the bait and the trap. Rapp wants to meet you, right?”
“Yeah, but that’s because he wants to get to you.”
“That’s what he said, but believe me, he wants to kill you as bad as or worse than me.”
“That’s only because he doesn’t know who you are. If he knew it was you…Senator…the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee…” Cameron rolled his eyes. “You’d be at the top of his list.”
“He’s never going to find out that I am behind all of this, is he, Peter?”
“No…no, sir, he isn’t.”
“And why not?”
Cameron wasn’t sure how to answer the question. “Ah…because I’d never tell him.”
“And because you’re going to kill him, Peter. You are going to use yourself as bait, and you are going to, as deftly as possible, get him to meet you at his house. If you can do that tonight, it would be perfect, but if come tomorrow morning he isn’t responding, I want you to use the girl. Tell him he has thirty minutes to meet you at his house, and if he doesn’t come alone, the girl dies.” Clark looked at Cameron sternly. “Under no circumstances are you to set foot in that house. I don’t want you anywhere near it. Let Duser and his men handle it. I want them to make it look like Rapp killed Rielly and then blew his own brains out. A murder-suicide.”
Clark raised his glass and took a drink. The plan was perfect. NBC’s White House correspondent found dead in the home of suspected CIA operative. The investigations would start in both the House and the Senate. Clark would take the high road and remain dignified during the televised hearings, and then, when the timing was absolutely perfect, he would produce Rielly’s doctored journal. The journal would be filled with facts that would bring President Hayes to his knees and disgrace the Democratic Party. By the time the next election rolled around, Senator Hank Clark would be the GOP’s lead horse. The plan was perfect.