by Vince Flynn
* * *
Rapp watched from the backseat as the driver made another call, speaking clearly and simply on speakerphone. Apparently, Claudia had indeed imparted how Rapp felt about betrayal and the man wanted to make sure he didn’t come under suspicion. There didn’t seem to be any reason to question his motivations. So far, all communications had been with spotters stationed along the sparsely traveled two-lane highway they were on.
There was still a dim glow on the western horizon, occasionally overpowered by oncoming headlights on the other side of a broad median. The moon was growing increasingly brilliant, revealing the flat desert around them in greater and greater detail. A light breeze was kicking some dust in the air, adding to the visual distortion of that time of evening. Overall, conditions for what they had to do were about as good as could be hoped for. Whether it would be enough, though, remained to be seen.
“Five minutes,” their driver said after disconnecting the call. “Our people will be in position as I described earlier. The cameras will only be blind for twenty seconds and if you exceed that I will drive away and leave you lying on the highway. Understood?”
“We’ll make it work,” Rapp said, winding a piece of tape around Isa’s right shirt cuff to secure the loose fabric. He pulled back and checked his handiwork before reexamining similarly taped areas on his own body. Everything looked smooth. Nothing to get hung up.
“You ready, Bashir?”
The man smiled in what little light could make its way to the vehicle’s backseat. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like this. These days, I mostly golf. Good for the career and much safer.”
“All evidence to the contrary.”
“You make a valid point.”
“Our man is coming up from behind,” the driver announced.
Rapp twisted around and spotted a set of headlights approaching fast. Ahead, he could see a low hill where the road split into three lanes and the semi that was there to block the cameras. Their driver was on the phone again, speaking to both vehicles and watching a timer on his phone. They would all come together at the beginning of the surveillance blind spot.
“One minute,” the driver announced. “Forty-five seconds… Thirty seconds.”
Rapp rolled down the window. He’d go first and then help Isa, who was hopefully a little more nimble than he looked. At least his waistline hadn’t swelled to the point that he’d be in danger of getting stuck.
The dusty desert air began swirling through the vehicle as they eased into the middle lane and came up on the semi. In the left lane, the headlights continued to approach at a speed favored by the Saudi privileged class.
“Ten seconds,” the driver said, shouting over the wind. “Nine… Eight…”
Rapp grabbed his duffle and waited at the open window. They came alongside the semi just as the trailing vehicle pulled even with them and slowed to match their speed. The driver was clearly experienced, bringing his SUV to within a foot of them and holding steady. Still, one mistake—or perhaps an intentional tap on the brake pedal—would leave Rapp’s broken body cartwheeling across the asphalt at sixty miles an hour. Claudia seemed to think it wouldn’t happen and that had to be good enough.
The duffle went first—through the SUV’s open window and into the back of the adjacent Rolls-Royce Cullinan. He went next, slipping across the gap and into the soft leather seat before immediately turning back toward the window. Isa was looking directly at him from the other vehicle, an expression of sadness etched across his soft features.
Only eight seconds until they came back into view of the cameras. Rapp stuck an arm through the window and tried to grab him by the shirt. Isa retreated out of reach and held up a hand in salute. A moment later, Rapp’s driver rolled up the window and jammed the accelerator to the floor. By the time they reentered the surveillance area, the Rolls had regained its speed.
Rapp let out a long breath and settled back into the extraordinarily comfortable seat.
“Well done!” the driver said in heavily accented English. His tone suggested he was prouder of his language skills than he should have been. “But what of your friend? He decides not to come? This is very bad decision. My colleague is a man of no humor.”
Rapp didn’t respond. The truth was it had to happen this way. If it had just been Isa, they could have worked something out. But it wasn’t just him. By now, the Saudis had almost certainly found the dead men at his house and would already be watching his wife and children. If he didn’t turn up quickly, they’d be arrested and used against him. He’d always been smart. And in this case that meant being capable of understanding that his luck had run out. That everyone would be better off if he were dead.
“What you need is in the bag on the floor. The one on the right. That one on the left has no meaning. Not now. It was for your friend.”
He dug in, finding a Ziploc bag containing a set of hair clippers, shaving implements, and a pair of tweezers.
“The tweezers are to make your eyebrows much more beautiful,” the driver explained. Based on his jovial tone, it was likely that he was from the smuggling part of Claudia’s list. High-end smugglers were generally the smartest and most cheerful of the criminal class. Creatives, she would call them.
“Look at the passport, my good friend.”
He found it in the top zipper pocket and used his penlight to examine an old, beardless photo of him that had been put through some kind of filter to turn him into a woman. His eyebrows really did look much more beautiful.
The main part of the bag contained a padded body suit to round out his hips and add an ample set of breasts. The final insult, though, was at the bottom. A pair of tennis shoes covered in gold glitter and topped with pink laces. He held them up and the driver glanced in the rearview mirror.
“They will help you move quickly, though I think it will not be required. And my wife tells me they are the very latest fashion!”
41
RAPP’S driver bypassed the private airport’s small but opulent terminal, piloting the Rolls through seemingly endless rows of private jets. The sleek white shapes of Cessnas, Gulfstreams, and Bombardiers glowed dimly in the light from the main building, descending into shadow as they drove deeper into them. Through the windshield, the glare from the open door of a Global 7500 became visible. A Saudi official stood by the steps and Rapp was relieved to see that it was a man.
There had been a time when Saudi women could leave the country with their faces covered. Those days were gone, but still they were only obligated to reveal themselves to female officials. Normally, one would be on hand to check facial features against passport photos. Apparently, the rules were a bit more relaxed for people who drove Rolls-Royces and flew in the top of Bombardier’s range.
“Because of air traffic control, we have no choice but to make a true flight plan to take you out of our country. You need an exit stamp in your passport. I don’t think we will have problems.”
“And if we do?”
“I am told that you know how to solve these kinds of problems. The plane is parked so cameras cannot see us. I can take the body and hide what has happened for the hour it will take for you to leave our airspace. After this I do not know what happens to you. I have not been told.”
“Understood.”
His driver slowed, focusing for a moment on the rearview mirror. “You look good, yes?”
“Yeah. Good enough to sell it, I think.”
The fat suit fit perfectly and was doing a good job obscuring his V-shaped torso. The fact that he’d dropped some muscle weight in order to return to endurance racing didn’t hurt, either. His face and hair were completely hidden by the burqa, leaving only his made-up eyes and neatly groomed eyebrows visible behind a light mesh. Overall, the effect was solid—right down to eyelashes a little heavy on the mascara.
His driver seemed to agree, nodding approvingly before gliding to a stop near the jet. Stepping out, he moved to the rear door to open it. His garb wa
s just as traditional—red checkered headgear and a spotless white thobe that stretched over his stomach in a way that made him look vaguely pregnant.
Rapp had transferred his belongings from his duffle to a couple of Gucci shopping bags that were more in keeping with his disguise. Combined with the fat suit, though, they made it a little difficult to get out of the car. The fact that his driver felt compelled to guide him onto the tarmac by the elbow would serve to make the whole thing look even more authentic. Just a couple of wealthy Saudis doing the things that wealthy Saudis did.
No neck snapping or jugular slicing turned out to be necessary. The official barely even looked at him, flipping the passport to an empty page and stamping it before wandering back toward the terminal.
Rapp didn’t wait for the inevitable good-bye hug from his driver, instead ending their brief relationship with a nod and heading for the jet. His glittery shoes squeaked relentlessly as he climbed the steps and walked along the rows of plush leather seats. Once through a divider at the back, he dropped his bags and closed the door behind him.
The engines started to spool up and he reveled in the dull whine as it increased in volume. Over the years, that sound had come to elicit a powerful psychological response in him. It meant safety. Survival. Escape. When the plane started to move, he dropped onto the couch and closed his eyes.
What the hum of private jets didn’t always mean, though, was success.
He was leaving behind two dead men—one who’d had too much concrete in his mouth to talk and the other who hadn’t been able to provide much more than the obvious observation that this thing went pretty far up the chain. Singh’s burner would likely prove useless and his cell was probably unsalvageable. Possibly the most useful thing he’d learned by risking his ass in Saudi Arabia was that Fendi made a pretty comfortable pair of sneakers.
The plane lifted off and Rapp realized he didn’t have any idea where it was going. Trying to find out would be risky with comms potentially compromised and there wasn’t much he could do about it anyway. Best to just peel off his fat suit and see where Claudia took him.
42
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, DC
USA
ONCE through the White House gate, Mike Nash was almost immediately waved down by a Secret Service agent. He eased his SUV to a stop and rolled down the passenger window.
“ ’Morning, Mike,” the man said, leaning his forearms on the sill.
In fact, it was more like the middle of the night—not a great time to be suddenly called into a meeting with the president. Particularly when the call came from an anonymous secure phone that Cook wasn’t supposed to have and that virtually no one knew about. A device he used to coordinate things that he never wanted to appear in the papers.
“Oval Office?” Nash responded by way of greeting.
Predictably, he shook his head. “The residence. There’s an escort waiting for you.”
He was tempted to ask whether Kennedy was on the list, but it was just a nervous tic. If she were going to sit in, the call would have come through official channels.
The man stepped back, and Nash accelerated again. He could feel the event horizon of that black hole hovering right in front of him. The compulsion to turn back was incredibly strong, but not strong enough. Now that he was this close, the pull of the Cooks’ gravity had become inescapable.
As promised, an escort met him out front and, after a perfunctory greeting, led him to the second floor. There she pointed to a closed door before disappearing without another word.
The Treaty Room, Nash knew from being a bit of a history buff. It had been used for various purposes over the years, but most notably by William McKinley to sign the treaty ending the Spanish-American War in 1898. Or was it 1899? Shit. He was just stalling now.
A timid knock was answered by a muffled voice that he took as an invitation. After entering, he closed the door behind him and examined his environment. Like the other areas of the White House regularly used by the Cooks, it had been significantly modernized. The structural elements—molding, fireplace, and wood floor—remained, but most of the furniture and artwork had been replaced. The exception was the treaty table itself. Originally used by Ulysses S. Grant for cabinet meetings, if he recalled correctly.
Both of them were there but not sitting together. The president was on a sofa that dominated the central conversation area, while his wife sat at a writing desk near the far wall. She turned when Nash entered, her movement highlighting the stillness and silence that dominated the room.
“You wanted to see me?” he said when that silence stretched to the breaking point.
The president just pointed to a stack of eight-by-ten photos on the coffee table in front of him. Not sure what else to do, Nash advanced and picked them up. He hadn’t been invited to sit, so he retreated to a more comfortable distance and examined them standing.
At first, there wasn’t much to see. The shadowy silhouettes of two men partially obscured by palm trees. He paused when he came upon a depiction of one of them climbing a fence that separated two residential properties. Based on the quality of the images, all were likely taken by private security cameras.
“Who are they?” Nash said, glancing up at the president.
“The fat one is Bashir Isa.”
Nash shook his head to indicate that the name didn’t register.
“Keep going,” the president said. “There’s a better picture of the second man near the end.”
Nash leafed through the rest of the photos, finally stopping on one near the end of the stack. It looked like it had been captured at an airport’s passport control area and this time the man couldn’t keep his face out of the camera.
“When was this taken?” he asked.
“Four days ago.”
Nash suddenly didn’t care if he’d been invited or not. He took a seat in a chair that maintained some distance between him and the Cooks, continuing to stare down at the image.
Mitch Rapp. Alive.
Emotions crashed over him with an intensity and speed that made it impossible to distinguish between them. Fear. Relief. Shame. The sensation of gravity being replaced with the sensation of drowning.
“He’s not dead,” Catherine said. “He—”
The president held up a hand, silencing her. Nash felt a glimmer of gratitude at Cook’s intervention. He needed to think. About the history of this thing and his role in it. About where it was going and whether it could be stopped.
After Rapp rescued Chism from the mountains near his research facility, Nash had received a personal call from the president asking for a copy of whatever information the Agency had on Nicholas Ward. It hadn’t been a particularly suspicious request. Ward was unquestionably the most influential private citizen in the world and one of his most critical people had nearly been lost to terrorists. What was unusual, though, was that Cook didn’t want Irene Kennedy to know.
It hadn’t been easy, but with the help of a team of the president’s loyalists at the NSA, he’d managed to download the files anonymously and hand them over. At the time, he’d told himself that the secrecy was just politics. The Cooks neither liked nor trusted Kennedy and didn’t want her to get the wrong idea that they were trying to use her organization to dig up dirt on Ward. Or, hell, maybe they were trying to get something on the man and knew she’d see through them. It was impossible to say. And, frankly, who cared? Anthony Cook was the president of the United States and he could have whatever fucking file he wanted delivered to him in any fucking way he wanted.
After Ward’s kidnapping, though, it had become ever more difficult for Nash to keep his head buried in the sand. The file he’d delivered contained detailed information on the compound, its security, and the hangar that was to be used in case of trouble. Still, he’d managed to keep looking away. It was one thing to get caught up in the Cooks’ orbit, but it was another to face head-on that you may have played a role in the deaths of the best friends y
ou’d ever had.
“Mike?” Cook prompted. Apparently, his reprieve was over.
Nash raised his head and looked directly at the man. The time for games was over. “Tell me what the hell’s going on.”
Cook let out a long breath and sank a bit deeper into the sofa. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“The file I gave you. You somehow got it to Gideon Auma. So he could get rid of Ward and Chism for you.”
“Not exactly. I gave it to the Saudis. And it appears that they gave it to Auma.”
Nash shook his head incredulously. Did Cook really think he’d believe the Saudis would make a move like this without his blessing? Or was he just hedging? Not wanting to say anything out loud until he understood Nash’s loyalties?
“Why?”
“That’s a big question but let me give you my best guess. The Saudis want Ward and Chism gone and a lot of people agree with them. He’s moving too fast and on too many fronts, Mike. Health care, energy, communications, artificial intelligence, robotics…” The president’s voice faded for a moment. “The human race can’t absorb that many fundamental changes all at once. But this isn’t news to you. You’ve spent your life protecting the world order that Ward’s taking a sledgehammer to.”
There was some truth to the man’s words. The idea that Ward might be paving the road to hell with his good intentions was a topic of discussion in elite circles throughout the world. His brilliance had put him completely out of touch with common people and their ability—even willingness—to constantly reevaluate their place in society. While people like Ward were able to take advantage of constant cultural and technological upheaval, there weren’t all that many people like him. None, in fact.
“And the Saudis are good people to have in your debt,” Nash said, unwilling to let Cook get away with pretending to be a passive observer.