by Vince Flynn
The gate began to slide open and he eased through, careful not to run over the two dogs trying to figure out how to tear the vehicle apart. Anna shouted at them from the front porch and finally managed to get control. In what seemed like a reasonable precaution, he stayed in the car until she dragged them inside and closed the door.
It reopened a moment later and Claudia fought her way past the swirling, barking mass. When she waved, he decided it was a signal that it was safe to emerge.
“Beautiful spot,” he called as he started toward the house.
She gave him a warm hug that he managed to return without gritting his teeth.
“I can’t believe you finally made it to Africa and you’re alone!”
“Me neither. Maggie would kill me if she knew. But don’t worry. We’ll get the whole crew out here soon. That is, if you’re still up for it.”
“Of course we are. You’re always welcome.”
He made sure his smile was enthusiastic as she led him around the side of the house to a table on the back lawn. It was set with a freshly opened bottle of local wine and a light lunch that looked typically delicious. He refused the alcohol, instead accepting a bottle of sparkling water. Claudia took the chair next to him and scooted it close enough that their arms touched. The walls and house behind them would thwart prying eyes and the clear sky would make drones obvious. She’d have swept for active listening devices and passive wouldn’t be workable in this environment. Despite that, she remained cautious. Her appearance and the way she got on with Anna and his own kids made it easy to forget that Claudia Gould was a consummate pro.
“I take it you’re still up for a face-to-face meeting?” she said at a level that was barely above a whisper. An olive, held between her thumb and forefinger, hovered in front of her mouth as she spoke.
“That’s why I’m here.”
It was impossible not to wonder how much she knew. Had Rapp told her about the mole hunt? The involvement of Saudi intelligence? Did she know his current location? Would she even be aware that Ward and his people were alive? Rapp would only feed her what she needed to know to play her role. For his protection and for her own.
“Uncle Mike!”
Anna ran out of the back door and he abandoned his chair, crouching to pick her up. “You’ve got those dogs chained tight, right?”
“They’re in the kitchen. They like it there best because sometimes they can steal food. Sausage mostly. It’s called boerewors here. Did you know that?”
“I didn’t,” he said, setting her down again.
“How are the animals back home? Are you taking care of them? Snowball gets lonely when Mitch is gone, you know.”
“Snowball’s fine. And so are all the others. I have all the retired people taking care of them. It’s probably a good thing. Some of them are getting a little fat.” He blew out his cheeks and pulled out the front of his shirt to demonstrate the former operators’ increasing girth.
Anna slapped him on the leg. “You’re mean!”
“Sweetheart,” Claudia said, “Uncle Mike and I have a few things to talk about and then he’s going to want to see your new bike. Why don’t you get it out of the shed so you can show him how good you are at riding now?”
She ran off.
“And don’t forget to oil the chain!” her mother called after her. “Just like Mitch showed you. One link at a time.”
Nash watched her disappear around the side of the house before sitting back down. He needed to get this over with before his brain—and his heart—exploded.
“So, everything’s okay with Mitch and the guys?”
Again, she nodded.
He let out a long breath calculated to look like relief. “He has a way of causing problems, doesn’t he? The president is going to think Irene’s been holding out on him. The Saudis think he’s responsible for the deaths of three of their people. And I can’t get a refund on the caterer for his wake.”
“I’m sorry, Mike. I know how hard this has been on everyone. If there had been another way, Mitch would have done it.”
He didn’t respond, suddenly realizing he was blithering like an amateur. The tendency to run on at the mouth when you were under stress was something he normally wasn’t prone to. The problem was that he’d never been under this much stress. Not in combat. Not during the births of his children. Not when he’d woken up in the hospital after getting blown to kingdom come in Afghanistan. Never.
“I’m sure that everything will be clear once you’ve had a chance to talk to him,” she continued.
“When?” Nash said.
“Tomorrow.”
“Uganda?”
She nodded and slipped him a piece of paper. “You’ll need to drive north to this address. It’s a private airstrip. Be there at nine a.m. A pilot will meet you and take you where you need to go.”
* * *
Nash looked in the rearview mirror and waved through his window as the gate slid open. Anna was on her bicycle, steering confidently with one hand and returning his wave with the other. Claudia was at the front door watching the dogs bolt after him.
He thought that some of the weight pressing down on him would disappear when he cleared the fence line, but it didn’t happen. If anything, it got worse. He was already starting to see the world in terms of BR and AR—Before Rapp and After Rapp. His life would be changed forever. Who he was would be changed forever.
He glanced over at the phone lying on the passenger seat but didn’t reach for it. The update he’d promised to provide could wait. Instead, he just stared out at the road and forced his mind to go gloriously blank.
After an hour, he couldn’t put it off any longer. Reaching for the phone, he connected a wired headset and dialed a number that precious few people had.
“Hold on,” a familiar voice said when the call was picked up.
He waited, listening to muffled voices as a meeting was hastily adjourned and its attendees ushered out.
“Go ahead,” President Cook said finally.
“I’m on for tomorrow in Uganda.”
“Is there anything more you need from me?”
“No. I have people on the ground already. After this call, I’m going to have to go dark. Claudia will move me around until she’s satisfied I’m not being tracked. If anything looks even slightly suspicious, she’ll pull the plug.”
“Then you’re on your own.”
“Yeah.”
“We understand how difficult this situation is for you. It’s not something we take lightly. Or forget easily.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll look forward to you getting back and starting the next phase of your career. And your life.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Try to relax, Mike. You have the most powerful weapon ever devised by nature on your side.”
“What’s that?”
“Your opponent’s trust.”
The line went dead, and Nash looked over at the phone before ripping the headphones out and throwing them against the passenger-side window.
47
SOUTHWESTERN UGANDA
AS African buses went, this one wasn’t so bad. Nash had a double seat to himself with only ten or so other passengers on board. No children, no farm animals. Just darkness and silence so thick it made it hard to breathe. In truth, he’d have welcomed a few crying kids and pissed-off chickens.
The Cessna turboprop that he’d boarded outside of Clanwilliam, South Africa, had dropped him at a dirt landing strip in a mountainous area of what he assumed was Uganda. There he’d been picked up in a Toyota sedan that had been on the road since he was in grade school and shuttled to the nearest town. After spending an afternoon being led through crowded markets and random buildings, he’d been ushered onto this bus. That had been two hours ago.
The dusty headlights caused the forest on either side to glow a deep green and he watched the trees pass from his position next to the window. Claudia had accomplished her goal with the expected
efficiency. He was completely alone and off the radar now. His only possessions were contained in the small backpack in the seat next to him: two liters of water, a few energy bars, a tablet, a satphone, and a Colt M45 pistol.
Beyond that, he had the clothes on his back and a small tin of Excedrin in his shirt pocket. Nash availed himself of the latter, popping two in his mouth and swallowing without the aid of a drink. Whether they’d do anything about his cracking skull remained to be seen. Likely not.
He closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind. It didn’t work, though. Instead, he drifted back to his time in the Marine Corps. Fighting an enemy that could be seen and defined. The clearly delineated battle between good and evil. The strange comfort of being a piece on the chessboard and not the player hovering over it.
He should have never left. He’d been well respected and well liked. His combat record had been impeccable. He could have risen to the rank of colonel and spent his career commanding loyal operators without hidden agendas or grand plans. Just a desire to protect their countrymen and defend their comrades.
But he had left. He wasn’t a simple soldier anymore. He was a spy. A politician even. He was one of the elite class of people who ruled the world. Someone who couldn’t be trusted any more than he could trust. Nothing was simple for him and it never would be again.
* * *
Nash didn’t realize that he’d fallen asleep until he felt the bus lurch to a stop. The driver stood and started back, undoubtedly to help someone with their bags as they got out. Where they’d be going, though, was a mystery. The bus was surrounded by dense forest and submerged in the same darkness that it had been before he’d closed his eyes.
He wasn’t particularly surprised when the man halted in front of him and pointed through the window at a narrow dirt track leading north. Nash grabbed his pack and walked past the curious passengers before stepping out into the cool night air. The path he was apparently supposed to take was visible in the glow of the headlights, but not for long. The bus pulled away and he found himself left with nothing but a little starlight shimmering through a cloud of diesel exhaust.
This just kept getting better and better.
* * *
After a couple of hours of walking, the jeep track narrowed to something more like a trail. He hadn’t seen or heard anything, but it was possible that he was being watched. Maybe even scanned for transmissions from a phone or other communications device. He doubted it—this was likely more about making sure he wasn’t being followed than testing him. Still, he’d removed the battery from his satphone before leaving South Africa. Mitch Rapp and Claudia Gould were a suspicious pair.
Another fifteen minutes took him to a clearing with a much better road coming in from the east. It was undoubtedly the route Rapp had taken to get his SUV up there.
“Asshole,” Nash said, striding across the clearing and enveloping Rapp’s hand in his own.
“I thought you were lost. Too much time behind a desk.”
“I refuse to be lectured by a talking corpse.”
“You drive,” Rapp said, walking around the front of the vehicle.
They climbed in and Nash bounced the SUV down the road toward what he assumed would be the rural highway he’d come from.
“Congratulations, Mitch. You’re the first person in history to add explosions to what should have been another boring mole hunt.”
“Where does Irene stand?” Rapp said. He wouldn’t give anything away until he knew what Nash had been told.
“Basically, nowhere. We know it was some kind of worm, but Marcus can’t figure out how it was introduced or under whose credentials. What we do know, though, is that the mole’s interests were pretty specific. They wanted to know about Nicholas Ward and not much else. Can I assume that the fact that you were in Saudi Arabia suggests you’re further along than we are?”
He nodded.
“Did you kill Bashir Isa?”
“No.”
“What about the other two?”
“Yeah. Those are mine.”
Nash let out a long breath. “That’s not exactly what I wanted to hear.”
“Why not?”
“Because the top of the president’s head is blowing off, Mitch. What I needed was to go back and tell him you didn’t have anything to do with this. And the truth is, that ain’t nothin’. Irene still hasn’t told him about the mole or the fact that Ward and Chism are alive. When he finds out she’s been holding out on him, it’s not going to just be his head that’s exploding, it’s going to be everything inside the beltway.”
“It looks like the Saudis wanted David Chism dead and they put Gideon Auma up to that first attack. When it didn’t work, they accessed our mainframe to get information on Ward and passed it on to Auma with a detailed plan on how to get to him.”
“Can you prove any of that?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Working on it? Are you fucking kidding me? Irene’s going to be lucky to still have a job by the end of the week. We need to do more than work on it. We need the Saudis dead to rights. The only thing that’s going to appease the Cooks at this point is if you give them the Kingdom on a silver platter.”
“It all comes down to finding the mole.”
“And where are you with that?” Nash said, feeling the sweat break under his hairline. He’d taken every precaution to remain hidden, but no cover was perfect.
“I managed to get a hold of Isa’s burner phone and the one used by the man the Saudis had dealing directly with Auma.”
Nash glanced over at Rapp’s silhouette in the dashboard light. “How does that help us? I assume they were using strict protocols and only communicating with other burners?”
“Yeah, but that might not be as secure as we thought. I handed the phone off to Ward’s people. They think they might be able to put names to the people called from it.”
“Bullshit.”
“That’s what I said. But I have to admit he talks a pretty good game.”
Nash rolled his window the rest of the way down when the sweat that had been limited to his hairline began to ooze from every pore. The names of the director of the GID. Of the Saudi prince. Of the president of the United States. But most important, his fucking name.
“If Ward can pull it off, he’s going to be Irene’s favorite person in the world. I honestly don’t know if it’ll be enough for her to keep her job but having something to show for all this won’t hurt her on her way out. How soon will you know?”
“He says we’re still a couple weeks out. If it works at all.”
Nash relaxed a bit and began slowly shaking his head. “So now we can’t even trust burners? Shit.”
Rapp ignored the observation. “Tell Irene to back off the mole hunt. If she’s not getting anywhere, she’s just risking spooking them. Let them think we’ve hit a dead end. With a little luck, Ward will be able to deliver.”
“And then miraculously come back to life.”
“That’s the plan.”
“So, we’ve got to keep all this from the president for another two weeks?”
“Somewhere around there. If his office gets hold of the fact that Ward’s alive, it’s going to leak. And then our mole is going to disappear.”
Nash chewed his lip for a moment. “It’s a big ask, Mitch. Irene’s under a huge amount of pressure. For the first time, the cracks are starting to show in her.”
“You don’t think she’ll be on board?”
“I have no idea,” Nash said, thumbing toward the backseat. “But she gave me a tablet with a message for you on it. It’s in my pack.”
“Do you know what it says?”
Nash shook his head. “She said you should use the password from Belarus. I assume that means something to you?”
Rapp didn’t immediately react, but his hesitation was to be expected. It would be unusual for Kennedy to ask him to reuse an old password, but Nash wasn’t privy to their current protocols. The Belarus one was the m
ost obscure thing he’d been able to access. Suspicious, but in the current context probably not fatal.
Rapp retrieved the tablet, started it, and put on a wired headset. Out of the corner of his eye, Nash saw him enter the indicated password and click a video file in the center of the screen.
When Irene Kennedy’s image came on, Nash returned his attention to the rutted dirt road ahead. He’d already seen the video more than thirty times. Generated by one of Cook’s people, the computer-generated masterpiece was indistinguishable from the real thing. Nash had known Kennedy for years and even after repeated, detailed viewings couldn’t find a single flaw. If he hadn’t been involved in its creation, he would have never even thought to question its authenticity. Deep fake videos were an incredible, terrifying technology that would soon change the world.
On-screen, Kennedy’s doppelgänger was telling Rapp that she had flown to Uganda to meet with him personally. That she suspected betrayal at the highest levels of government and needed to talk to him face-to-face about what she’d discovered. In closing, the counterfeit image told him that Nash wasn’t aware of the meeting, but that he should attend and could be trusted. The video then faded into a map showing her supposed location. Rapp studied it for a moment before turning to him.
“When we get to pavement, turn right.”
48
“IT’S going to be a pretty serious party,” Mike Nash said. “The barn’ll be decorated. Top-notch caterer. Kegs. Wine brought in from a boutique producer in Napa. You and the guys should fly back for it. Not every day you get to attend your own wake.”
Rapp managed a vague smile. “Since it sounds like I’m paying for it, maybe we will.”
They fell silent again and Nash returned his attention to the moonlit farmland beyond their headlights. They were an hour and a half into what would be a fairly long drive. While Claudia had run him around quite a bit, he was pretty sure the mountains where he’d met Rapp were part of the Rwenzori range in the southwestern part of Uganda. Their fictitious rendezvous with Kennedy was located more in the middle of the country. Based on the map he’d committed to memory, Nash guessed they had another six hours in the car.