by Flynn Vince
“That’s a good one,” Adams sneered, “coming from the most racist, bigoted generation this country has ever seen.” He took another drink.
“You can bring it up with Stan.” Rapp checked his watch. “I have to get back to Langley for a meeting.” He took a step toward the door and stopped. “I thought you might be worth saving, but I guess I was wrong.”
“Wait!” Adams said desperately. “You can’t leave me here with him.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he’ll kill me!” Adams yelled.
“And how would that affect me?”
“It would.” Adams’s eyes darted around the room as his brain tried to come up with something. “It would make you an accessory to murder.”
“You’re kidding, right? That’s the best you can come up with?”
“I have powerful allies,” Adams warned.
Rapp rubbed his forehead and decided to write off the man’s lame excuses to the vodka. “Glen, I don’t think you’re a bad person. I just think you’re confused. You’ve gotten yourself wrapped up in the legal aspect of this. You’re focused on 2 percent of the issue and you’re ignoring the other 98 percent. You’ve lost all sense of proportion, and if you can’t open your eyes to that, there is nothing I can do to help you.”
“I have done nothing wrong.”
“Last chance, Glen. I’m going to walk out this door and Stan’s going to come back in here and blow your head off. Then they’ll cut you up into six pieces and incinerate you limb by limb. By lunch the only sign that you ever existed will be a pile of ash that’ll fit into a coffee can. By dinner that ash will be spread far and wide. All evidence destroyed. The only thing the feds will have to go on is the fact that you left the country… that and the fact that you’re a drunk. They’ll look for a few weeks and then they’ll write your ass off.”
Adams shook his head defiantly. “They will know something is wrong and they won’t stop until they get to the bottom of it.”
Rapp shrugged as if he’d given it his best shot. “I wish I could say it was nice knowing you, Glen, but I’d be lying. You’re a self-serving prick, and you won’t be missed… not even by your own family.” Rapp hit the intercom button. “I’m done in here. He’s all yours.”
CHAPTER 16
TOOLESBORO, IOWA
HAKIM learned to play chess when he was seven years old. His grandfather had taught him the game, and for the next six years until the kind old man died, they played every week. One of the first things his grandfather had taught him was that a chess match was often decided because of one bad move. A move that, once made, set the game on an almost certain path. And in chess, as in life, a move like that could never be taken back. So the moral of the story, according to his grandfather, was to think long and hard before deciding something difficult. Look at it from every angle. See what you see and then ask yourself if there’s something you can’t see.
Hakim didn’t know if it was all that chess, or a God-given abundance of common sense combined with an easy attitude, but whatever it was, he had been able to avoid a lot of trouble over the years by staying patient and making prudent decisions. The same could not be said for Karim. His daring, brash behavior had led him to great success on the battlefield in Afghanistan, and his plan to attack America, despite his own criticism, had been a huge success. In the more subtle arena of daily life, though, his ability to pick up on the moods and currents of a foreign land was almost nonexistent.
The gun came up and before Hakim could react it was fired. It was as if the entire thing painfully played out before him in slow motion. The father went down with a wound to the gut and the kid turned in panic and began to run. He made it three steps and then collapsed with a bullet to the lower back.
Karim lowered his weapon and turned to Hakim, “Now let’s find out why they were really here.” He walked down the porch steps and onto the gravel.
With the loud cracks of the 9mm pistol still echoing down the river valley, Hakim’s brain took off headlong in an attempt to assess the damage. In the first millisecond he knew it was bad. Extremely bad. He had had the situation under control and then Karim’s massive, paranoid ego led him to step in when there was so clearly no need for him to do so. It was as if all the frustrations of the last week came pouring out at once. He followed his friend down the steps and said, “I already know why they are here, you idiot.”
Karim spun to face his friend. “What did you just call me?”
“I called you an idiot! An unbelievable idiot!”
“You will show me the proper respect,” Karim commanded, “or you will be punished.”
“I’d like to see you try.” Hakim took a step toward his old friend and pushed his sleeves up. “Do you have any idea what you have done?”
An incredulous look on his face, Karim answered, “I stopped these two men from walking away and telling the authorities that we are here. I did what you should have done.”
“Should have done? You are an utter fool. You have ruined everything and for nothing. These two weren’t going to tell anyone anything other than what I told them. They were going to go hunt down by the river and leave us alone.” Hakim looked at the father and son. Both of them were writhing on the ground in pain. Now what the hell were they going to do with them? “They believed me, you arrogant ass.”
“You are the fool,” Karim spat back. “They only acted like they believed you. They are probably police.”
“You have never been to this country before. You have no idea how to read these people. They are not police.” Hakim motioned at the house, the barn, and the surrounding land. “Where are we to go?”
Karim was obviously irritated by the question. “Well… if they are hunters as you say, we will bury the bodies and be done with them.”
“And when they don’t make it home for dinner tonight, and the wife calls the police and tells them they were coming out here to hunt. What do we do then? Because the police will come and look for them.”
Karim saw that the boy had pulled a cell phone from his jacket and was trying to make a call. He raised his gun, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. The orange hat flew off the boy’s head in a puff of dust and his foot twitched a few times before he went completely still. Looking back at Hakim as if nothing had happened, he said, “Then we will have to leave.”
The father howled in agony and started to frantically crawl toward his son. Hakim was sickened by the entire scene. None of it had to happen. These two men had done nothing wrong. “I explained to you what would happen if we had to leave. I told you in detail that our best chance for survival was to stay here for at least a month. To wait them out. Then we would be able to slip out of the country.”
“I am sick of your complaining,” Karim announced. “I question your devotion.”
“And I question your devotion. You are a coward. No different than the rest of the lazy rich men who claim to lead us.”
Genuine anger flashed across Karim’s face. “How dare you question me?”
“I am not one of your brainwashed robots. I have known you for too long. If you were a real warrior you would have gone into that building with your men and martyred yourself. But you are too obsessed with your own fame. The Lion of al Qaeda… Ha!” Hakim spoke in reference to the name that Karim had given himself in the videos he released after the attacks. “You should be called the coward of al Qaeda.” He looked back to the father, who had reached his son and was sobbing uncontrollably.
Karim could not take another word. The insolence of his friend should have been checked a long time ago. “Prove to me that you are not a coward. Kill the father now. I order you.” Karim tossed his gun to his friend.
The gun sailed through the air, but Hakim made no effort to catch it. The gun landed at his feet and skidded a few inches along the gravel. Hakim looked down at the gun and shook his head. “There is no honor in this. No bravery in killing an unarmed father and son who have done nothing to offend you, or Allah
.”
“I order you!”
“We are the infidels in this land. This is wrong. If you want him dead, then you should finish what you started.”
“For the last time I order you to pick up the gun and shoot the father.”
“I don’t take orders from you,” Hakim said with a derisive scowl.
“Yes, you do.”
Hakim turned and started back for the house.
“Do not turn your back on me,” Karim yelled, but Hakim paid him no attention. Karim had finally had enough. He broke into a run and caught his friend just as he reached the steps. He delivered a quick rabbit punch to Hakim’s kidney and then kicked through the back of his right knee, collapsing him to the ground. Karim then grabbed him by the shirt, threw him onto his back, and dropped on top of him, delivering a flurry of punches to his friend’s face. “This,” he said in between his third and fourth punches, “is a lesson I should have taught you a long time ago.”
CHAPTER 17
LAKE ANNA, VIRGINIA
ADAMS pleaded, then cried, and in between the sniffles and tears he began mumbling to himself. The door buzzed and Rapp opened it to find Hurley standing on the other side, looking none too pleased that he was going to have to shoot his best friend’s son in the head for the second time.
“I should have never stopped you,” Rapp said in an apologetic tone.
“Damn right you shouldn’t have.” Hurley pushed past him, his cane in one hand and his gun in the other.
Adams snapped out of his mumbling trance and began screaming for Rapp to stop. Upon seeing Hurley and the gun, he tried to stand, and forgetting that his ankles were still tied to the chair, toppled over. He caught the edge of the table and brought it down with him, sending the glass and bottle of vodka crashing to the floor at the same time.
Hurley moved into position over him and took aim.
“Don’t shoot!” Adams screamed. “Mitch, wait! I know things! I can help!”
Rapp shared a quick look with Hurley as he walked back to Adams.
He squatted and said, “You get one shot at this, Glen. Tell me something worth knowing, and it better be good.”
Adams was lying on his side, the toppled chair still attached to his legs. He looked at the puddle of urine and then at Rapp. “Help me up first.”
“Fuck you!” Hurley growled as he jabbed the gun into Adams ’s face.
Rapp stood and again started for the door. Adams began screaming frantically for him to stop and Hurley let loose a litany of profanity that described in very colorful terms exactly what he thought of Adams. To further punctuate each word he stabbed his gun closer and closer to Adams ’s face until he had it pressed into his temple.
Rapp was halfway out the door when he heard a name. It was repeated three times in quick succession. Rapp stopped, his interest finally piqued, and turned. “What did you say?”
“Kathy O’Brien!” Adams said with his face pressed into the floor.
Rapp’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t sure exactly what he had expected to get out of Adams, but the name Kathy O’Brien wasn’t anywhere on the horizon. She was the wife of Chuck O’Brien, the director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. “What about her?” Rapp asked cautiously.
“That’s how I knew about the operation you were running.”
One of the keys to a successful interrogation, at least early on, was to keep the subject off balance. No matter how shocking or strange a piece of information might be, you never let it show. “Which operation,” Rapp asked, “would that be?”
“The mosques.”
“Go on,” Rapp ordered.
“The undercover guys you sent into the mosques.”
Rapp walked back and looked down at Adams. “You mean the operation that was leaked to the Post last week.”
“Yeah… Yeah… that’s the one.”
“The story you leaked, you mean?” Rapp asked.
Adams didn’t answer fast enough, so Hurley gave him a little love tap with the tip of the barrel-just hard enough to draw a drop of blood.
“Yes,” Adams screamed. “Yes… I was the one who told Barreiro.”
“The leak,” Rapp said, “that ended up getting one of my agents killed.”
“I… I… I,” Adams stammered, “wouldn’t know anything about that.”
Rapp glanced at his watch. He might have to be late for the meeting. “And just what does Kathy O’Brien have to do with this?”
“She’s… how I found out.”
“You already said that. I want specifics.” Rapp saw Adams ’s eyes begin to dart around again, which was a sign that his brain was scrambling to find the right lie. “Don’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“Lie to me.”
“I’m not… I mean I wasn’t going to.”
“Anything you say to me I’ll have verified within the hour, and if I find out you’ve lied to me… well, let’s just say I’m going keep you alive as long as it takes to make you feel some real pain.”
“She…” Adams’s eyes started darting again, until suddenly, a knife tip appeared an inch in front of the left one.
Rapp held the blade perfectly still. “I can tell when a man is lying to me. So one more time, what does Kathy have to do with this?”
Adams closed his eyes and said, “She’s been seeing a therapist.”
“And?”
“We had the office bugged.”
With great effort to conceal his surprise Rapp asked, “The therapist’s office?”
“Yes.”
Rapp’s mind was flooded with a half-dozen questions, but for now he needed to keep Adams focused on the most immediate facts. They could squeeze the rest out of him later. “So if I call my source at Justice, she’ll tell me that you had warrants to wiretap the therapist’s office?”
Adams took a long time to answer, which in itself was an answer.
Rapp cocked his head to the side. “You didn’t have a warrant?”
“Not exactly,” Adams admitted.
Rapp pulled the knife back and shared a quick look with Hurley. Things suddenly began to fall into place for Rapp. Why Adams knew the broad brushstrokes of what they had been up to, but could not pass the threshold needed to refer a case to Justice. “You wiretapped the office of a doctor and recorded the private therapy sessions of the wife of the director of the National Clandestine Service. And you did it illegally.”
“I was only trying to do my job.”
“And you lecture me about breaking the fucking law,” Rapp snapped.
“I was just trying to stop you. You were out of control.”
“Out of control… I break those laws to keep people safe. Real people. You break ’em to protect some piece of paper you don’t even understand.”
“I am trying to protect the world from animals like you.”
Rapp stuck the tip of the knife into Adams ’s left nostril and said, “I should-”
“Mitch,” Dr. Lewis announced from the door, “I’d like to have a word with you and Stan.”
Rapp resisted the urge to slice the traitor’s nose clean off his face. They had a standard policy during interrogations that whenever Lewis asked anyone for a private word, they were to drop everything and leave the room. Rapp stood and left the cell with Hurley. They closed the door and found Lewis pacing nervously. Nash was back from the house, shaved and in a dark blue suit, while Maslick was sitting behind the desk keeping an eye on the monitors.
Lewis held up a couple of fingers and said, “Two things… the first
… I don’t think you can ever allow him to go free. There is a chance that his illegalities were driven by a lack of judgment precipitated by the onset of alcoholism, but I think the odds of it are small. It’s more likely that in addition to suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, he is also a sociopath.”
“And this changes things… how?”
“He uses rules as a weapon. He gets extremely upset when he thinks anyone has acted
inappropriately, or has broken the law, yet he sees nothing wrong when he decides to break those very same laws. I’m not even sure he’s aware of it. He’s so narcissistic, so in love with himself, that he thinks he’s privileged. Rules are for the commoner, not someone like him, who is destined to make a difference in the world.”
“I could have told you that,” Hurley said, “and I didn’t even go to med school.”
Lewis ignored Hurley and said, “The narcissistic sociopathic combination is extremely dangerous… almost impossible to treat and never in a situation with this much pressure. He will say and do whatever he needs to stay alive and then after you let him go, the first chance he gets he will bolt. He would turn to anyone who he thought had the power to take you down.”
“Your second point?” Rapp asked.
“Normally, I would never admit this, but considering the situation, I think it would be best.” Lewis hesitated, wrestling with how best to word his admission.
“Doc,” Rapp said, “I don’t have all day. Spit it out.”
Lewis cleared his throat and nervously announced, “I am Kathy O’Brien’s therapist.”
CHAPTER 18
RAPP was out of time. If he and Nash were to have any chance of making the powwow at Langley, they had to be on the road in the next few minutes, and even then they would have to drive at least eighty miles an hour to give themselves a chance. Normally, Rapp didn’t concern himself with getting to meetings on time, but this was not your average run-of-the-mill bureaucratic black hole of a meeting. Kennedy had made it very clear the president had requested the presence of both her senior counterterrorism operatives, and while Rapp really didn’t care much for politicians, he’d dealt with a few presidents over his career, and found them tolerable in the sense that they understood it wasn’t a bad idea to have a man like Rapp around to deal with some of the stickier situations that popped up.
“Mike and I have to go.” Rapp looked at Hurley and said, “I wanna know who he used to bug Doc’s office. I wanna know where the originals are and I wanna know how many copies he made. And I want to move on this ASAP.”