by Vince Flynn
CHAPTER 39
RAPP’S feet glided along the pavement, beating out a steady five-and-a-half-minute-a-mile-pace. His shoulder throbbed, but he did his best to ignore it, and when he couldn’t ignore it he told himself he deserved worse. A man was dead. Luke Auclair, an innocent man who had been minding his own business, living his own life, until Rapp had sought him out and included him in his great miscalculation.
It had been a rough night. They’d traveled to the outskirts of Paris, where they’d stopped for gas and Rapp scrubbed the dried blood of the DGSE agent from his hands. He still had no idea if the man had made it. Maybe one life could be saved from the debacle. After that, they drove north a bit and checked into one of the big chain hotels by Charles de Gaulle Airport. The place was run-down, one of those five-hundred-room behemoths for business travelers who were willing to sacrifice service and cleanliness to be near the airport. The place was in dire need of remodeling, but Rapp barely noticed. He wasn’t in shock, but rather a bit jumbled from an evening of unexpected events.
He and Greta sat in near silence as they ate a late dinner, and then they went up to the room. She was good enough to not ask too many questions. She could tell he was trying to sort through some very heavy questions. Around midnight, with them both tossing and turning, he started to talk. The part about Luke weighed the heaviest on him. He was an innocent, a noncombatant, and the first rule of his job was to never harm noncombatants.
“But you didn’t know they would act the way they did,” Greta said. “You were testing them.”
“It doesn’t matter. I should have never involved him.”
Greta was quiet for a moment and then said, “But if you hadn’t it would have been you down on the street.”
“No,” Rapp said with self-loathing, “I knew better than to go into that apartment, and even if I had, I would have gone out the back door and my gun would have been ready and I would have been on guard. No one could have snuck up on me like that.”
They talked for a while longer and then Rapp kissed her on the forehead, told her he loved her, and said, “Let’s try to get some sleep.”
He held her with his good arm, and was grateful when he heard her breathing settle into a sleep pattern a short while later. Rapp continued to stare at the ceiling, replaying the events that he had watched from Bob and Tibby McMahon’s apartment as if it were a box seat at the theater. He dozed off a few times, but not for long. Sleep was rarely a struggle for him, and the more elusive it became, the more restless he grew. He ran through every conceivable scenario to determine who could have betrayed him. He pictured each face and then considered the possibility that they’d all conspired to have him killed. Had they decided to kill him based on bad information, or some information he wasn’t aware of? He slid his arm out from under Greta and decided he had to trust Kennedy. She had warned him to stay away from the safe house. She knew Victor was there, but did she know he’d been ordered to kill Rapp?
He finally fell asleep for a few hours and then woke just before 7:00 a.m. More restless than ever, he got out of bed and dug out his running shoes and some sweats.
Greta woke sleepily and asked, “Where are you going?”
“For a run. I need to work a few things out.” Rapp could tell she wasn’t pleased at the idea of his leaving, but she didn’t say anything. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back in an hour and then we can have some breakfast and make some decisions.”
“What kind of decisions?”
“I’m not sure.” Rapp had been struggling with that question all night, but he felt that a good run would give him the clarity to see the best path forward.
He asked the front desk if there was a decent place to run and was directed to a park a kilometer from the hotel. Running at an easy pace, he found the park with little difficulty and then pushed himself. In hindsight, it was all brutally clear. His cavalier attitude had gotten a harmless man killed. Now, an inner voice he did not recognize told him Luke was nothing more than a piece-of-shit drug dealer. That the world would be a better place without him. That he needed to suck it up and push on. The last part was right, but the first two weren’t. Rapp fought the instinct to rationalize his mistakes and his stupidity. This was a lesson that needed to be imprinted on his brain and never forgotten. Rapp knew if he failed on that front he would be on the express track to become Stan Hurley II, and he would sooner jump off a bridge than allow that to happen.
As he circled the park, pushing himself harder and harder, the clarity he sought began to emerge from the chaos. Kennedy was the one person he could trust and the one person he wouldn’t harm. Victor was as good as dead. Rapp didn’t care where he saw him next, but he hoped it was face-to-face. He wanted to look him in the eye when he pulled the trigger. It occurred to Rapp that it was unlikely that Victor would make such a bold move all on his own. He wasn’t smart enough, and that meant Hurley was the one calling the shots. The big question mark was Stansfield. Of the three people who directly managed him, he knew Stansfield the least.
In large part that was due to the man’s job. As deputy director of Operations he had more than a thousand people working under him. He received hundreds of calls and cables every day from his station chiefs at various outposts around the globe. There were deputies down the hall and all over the building who wouldn’t move without his guidance, and Rapp was just one cog in a very big intricate wheel, although he was a very important cog. Rapp got the impression Stansfield was heavily involved in the decision to turn him loose and it only made sense that he would be equally involved in the decision to terminate him.
All of Stansfield’s authority, however, could be ignored by the most stubborn man he’d ever known. Hurley was the problem, and yes, Rapp was biased when it came to him, but that bias was based entirely on how the man had behaved since he’d met him two years ago. He was everything that he accused Rapp of being and then some. The man was egomaniacal, reckless, disrespectful, dictatorial, and petty. Rapp concluded that Hurley was more than capable of issuing the kill order without Stansfield’s knowledge. But why have Victor kill the other two guys on the team? What were they guilty of?
Rapp knew his running pace almost to the second, and after three miles, he nudged it to an even five-minute mile. Two miles later his shoulder was stinging and his lungs were burning and a thought struck him like a lightning bolt. Rapp’s legs stopped pumping and he slowed to a stop. His chest was heaving, his lungs working extra hard to pull in oxygen. He stood as upright as possible and looked off in the distance at three cooling towers for a nuclear power plant. He kept running the idea over and over in his head, and the more he did so, the more it became the only thing that made sense. Victor thought he had killed him, and then he turned his gun on his unsuspecting fellow team members. Why would a man do such a thing? There were only two possible reasons. Either they’d done something seriously wrong, and had been targeted for elimination, or they were killed because of what they’d seen.
It was as if a bad picture had suddenly come into focus. If the other two guys had done something wrong there were much better, and quieter, ways to get rid of them. Rapp was suddenly convinced that they’d been killed because they saw Victor shoot a man they thought was Rapp in the back of the head. Victor and Hurley had made it brutally obvious that they didn’t approve of him. Were they willing to frame him to get rid of him? Victor was incapable of accepting blame, which meant he would have to blame the other deaths on someone else, and that someone else was going to be Rapp.
Rapp turned and started running back in the direction of the hotel. He needed to get hold of Kennedy, and in order to do that he’d have to be mobile and, if at all possible, keep Hurley out of the loop.
CHAPTER 40
KENNEDY accompanied Stansfield into the Embassy while everyone else stayed with the vehicles. Rollie Smith was waiting for them and escorted them through security with only a word. Kennedy had heard a great many stories about Smith over the years. He had a substantial mustache
that he kept perfectly trimmed and waxed. He had started growing it in his early twenties to help diminish his overbite, and over the years it became his signature trait, that and his bow ties. Smith prided himself on being the consummate British gentleman. He was a lifelong member of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, more commonly known as MI6. His father had been a midlevel diplomat for Britain’s Foreign Office, and the young Smith and his two sisters had spent almost their entire youth living on the Continent. Their father’s longest posting was in France, but he’d also spent time in Belgium, Austria, and Germany.
Smith was eighteen and living in Belgium when Hitler rolled into Poland and kicked off World War II. The following spring the Nazis did their famous end run around the Maginot Line and the family was recalled to London. The father recognized that young Roland was going to join the war effort with or without his permission, so he pulled a few strings and got Rollie placed with MI6. Four years later he met an American who had spent the greater portion of the last year of the war behind Nazi lines.
Over the following decades, as the Cold War heated up, Thomas Stansfield and Rollie Smith shared a common passion—they both wanted to destroy the Soviet Union. Sometimes they were stationed in the same cities, their embassies often only blocks from each other. Other times they were continents away, but the distance never mattered. They remained the closest of friends and confidants.
The two men greeted each other with solid handshakes and warm smiles. They were stoically and unapologetically from a generation in which men did not hug men.
Smith turned his charm on Kennedy. “What a nice surprise to see you, Dr. Kennedy.”
Kennedy smiled. “And you as well, Sir Roland.” For some reason, Kennedy couldn’t help but think of George MacDonald Fraser’s hilarious character Flashman whenever she encountered Smith.
Smith was either in a hurry or more than likely shared the same fear that was common with intelligence officers the world over. Talking in transient, unsecure places was never a good idea, unless you wanted to be heard. As was the case with the U.S. Embassy in Paris, MI6’s secure offices were located in the second subbasement. They took the stairs, and when they got to a heavy steel door with a camera above it, Smith punched a code into a cipher lock and they entered. He greeted a man behind a desk but didn’t bother with introductions. They continued down a long hall with ugly cream-colored walls and linoleum floors. Unlike the rest of the Embassy, this area had missed the big remodeling.
Smith opened a door on the right and motioned for Kennedy and Stansfield to enter. Kennedy felt immediately familiar with the type of room. The floor was rubber and the walls and ceiling were covered in gray acoustic foam. This was where the MI6 gang would hold their most delicate meetings. The table had four chairs on each side and a chair at each end. At the far end a very small man dressed in black was seated and smiling at her. She smiled back and guessed his age to be somewhere close to ninety.
Kennedy noticed the white tab at the front of the man’s collar. She approached him, extended her hand, and introduced herself.
The man continued to smile and in French said, “Very nice to meet you, Ms. Kennedy. I am Monsignor Peter de Fleury.”
Stansfield asked, “I’m not going to have to kiss the back of your hand now, am I?”
“Yes,” the old priest said, “and my bony white butt while you’re at it.”
Kennedy was caught completely off-guard. Her boss never joked.
Stansfield and Smith were now laughing like schoolboys.
“Your Eminence,” Stansfield said, “it is such an honor to be in your holy presence.”
De Fleury smiled and said, “I should have you excommunicated.”
“You probably should, and then I’ll just join the Church of England like Rollie here.”
“And you will burn in hell with Rollie and all the other pagans.”
Now all three of them were laughing, and they continued their ribbing for another few minutes until they finally settled down. De Fleury looked at Kennedy and said, “I’m sorry you have to put up with such childish behavior, but you should have seen these two at the end of World War II.” The monsignor turned his cloudy eyes on Smith and Stansfield and said, “Remember the time I had to save you from that whorehouse when the—”
“Hey, hey,” Stansfield shouted, “don’t start telling lies, or I’ll be forced to hand my secret files over to the Vatican. You’ll be stripped of that new fancy title and live out your final years in shame.”
“Go ahead,” de Fleury replied. “It would be the most exciting thing those old peacocks have read in years.”
There was another round of laughter and more stories. Kennedy had never seen her boss like this, and it made her view him in a different light. With his relative youthfulness and sharp mind it was easy to forget that he had served in World War II. When the men had finally settled down and were done teasing each other things took on a more serious tone.
Smith turned to Stansfield and said, “I wish things were different right now. I would love nothing more than to spend an evening with the two of you telling lies about each other, but I’m afraid in light of what happened last night that is not going to happen on this trip. The DGSE will be harassing you, no doubt.”
Stansfield was unfazed. “Once you’ve run a station in Moscow, the DGSE isn’t so intimidating.”
“True,” Rollie said in a reflective tone, “but this new man they have running their Special Action Division is not someone to take lightly.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Peter will fill you in on something very important in a moment, but first I, too, have something rather important to share.”
This was not a surprise to Stansfield. He had taken a call from Rollie at home on Saturday. A few coded words were dropped into the conversation and when Stansfield arrived at the office he found a secure cable from his London station chief waiting for him. It was a request for a face-to-face meeting. The topic to be discussed was the murder of the Libyan oil minister. “I appreciate you reaching out, Rollie.”
“That’s how you and I do things. We look out for each other.” Smith drummed his fingers on the table for a moment and then said, “The Libyan oil minister, Tarek al-Magariha . . . he was on our payroll.”
Stansfield didn’t seem surprised. “I thought that’s what this might be about.”
“There’s a slight wrinkle, however. He was also on the DGSE’s payroll.”
This time Stansfield was surprised. “Who had him first?”
“They did.”
“And then you turned him.”
“Not me personally, but yes, my people did.”
Stansfield took a moment to measure what he had learned and then he asked the most obvious question. “Did the Directorate know?”
Smith shrugged. “Probably.”
“Probably is the best you can do?”
“We have nothing definitive, but Tarek’s handler said he was growing increasingly nervous. He wanted us to bring him in. He thought the Directorate had become suspicious and then he was sent abroad for this most recent trip without any security. He told his handler that they were going to kill him.”
“They?”
“I’ve been told he was more afraid of his Islamic associates than of the Directorate.”
Kennedy’s heart was beating a little fast as she thought of Rapp’s words. That it was a setup. That they had been waiting for him. “Did you say they sent him abroad without any security?”
“Yes.”
“I thought the papers said four of his bodyguards were killed.”
Smith turned his attention from Kennedy to Stansfield and gave him a hard stare.
Stansfield cleared his throat and said, “Rollie knows, Irene.”
“Rollie knows what?”
“He knows about Mitch. He knows he was there the other night.”
Kennedy didn’t move a muscle, but she felt blood rushing to her face. Before she could respond Stansfiel
d gave an explanation of sorts.
“We have no better ally than Rollie and MI6. They have access to areas that we don’t and vice versa. I trust Rollie more than a good number of people in our building.”
Kennedy nodded. “I am in no position to judge, sir. You don’t owe me an explanation. You just caught me off-guard.”
“There is a tendency,” Smith said, “in this business to hoard information. We all know why. We don’t want certain people to get their hands on that information, but as you’re going to learn this morning, when you trust certain people, they can help fill in gaping holes that you would be incapable of filling on your own.” Smith turned to de Fleury and said, “Right, Peter?”
“That is very true.”
Keeping his eyes on Kennedy, Smith said, “Monsignor de Fleury was very active in the French Resistance during the war. He was so successful that after the war he was awarded the Legion of Honor by General Charles de Gaulle in a private ceremony. Over the ensuing decades he has helped French Intelligence and both our services when he can.”
“Don’t listen to him,” de Fleury said, “I have grown old and worthless, but there was a time when I did my part.”
“And you are still doing your part as they will soon find out.” Smith prodded him. “Tell them what you were witness to Saturday night.”
De Fleury smiled at Kennedy and said, “My church is Sacré-Coeur Basilica . . . you have heard of it?”
“Of course.”
“It is a very busy place. Lots of tourists. Lots of people coming and going. It also happens to be the perfect place to hold certain meetings for the Directorate. Such a meeting took place on Saturday night.” De Fleury reached inside his coat, fumbled for a moment, and retrieved several sheets of white paper folded once the long way. He placed the papers in front of Kennedy. “I took notes. My mind isn’t as sharp as it once was. A man named Paul Fournier who works for the Directorate set up the meeting. The other men were wicked. Or at least two of them were. I’ve been around evil before and these two men were evil. They were killers. They were Muslims and they were very rude. They complained about meeting at the church.”