by Vince Flynn
“He will not be happy to hear that.”
“I don’t give a fuck what makes him happy or not. He needs to do what he said he would do and he needs to do it today.” Garret slammed the phone back into its cradle and walked out of the office.
27
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
Kennedy sat behind her desk and watched and listened as McMahon and Juarez worked themselves into a frenzy. She knew both of them extremely well. It was not abnormal to see either of them get this upset. They were very passionate about their jobs. The unusual part was seeing them upset at the same time. Well, that wasn’t exactly right either. The abnormality lay in them being upset over the same thing. Their jobs dictated that they approach situations from different angles. Angles that didn’t always intersect. What Juarez deemed to be best for America did not always jibe with the FBI’s vision. In essence, McMahon’s job was to enforce the law and investigate and arrest those who broke it. Juarez’s job was to send men and women to foreign countries to recruit spies, gather information, conduct covert operations, and pretty much break laws on a weekly if not daily basis. There was an undeniable conflict between the two missions.
Mitch Rapp had somehow managed to get both men on the same page, which was another red flag to Kennedy. Mitch was a disrespectful, almost always unmanageable asset. He was akin to a company’s top sales rep, who was often the same guy who thumbed his nose at the sales manager, showed up late to meetings, or didn’t show at all and in general did whatever in the hell he wanted, just so long as he kept hitting his numbers. Pretty much every successful company had a rep that fit that bill. Men and women who were at their best when management stayed out of their way. Smart bosses knew it was wise to turn them loose and look in the other direction. In a sense Rapp had been the CIA’s top rep for ten-plus years and counting, and Juarez was his de facto sales manager. Juarez did not resent Rapp. He’d been on the messy end of black ops himself and the two men shared that unique bond, which was no small thing in a bureaucracy where ninety-nine percent of the employees had a desk job. Juarez respected Rapp, even revered him and depended on him in situations just like this to get results where others had failed. The problem, Kennedy knew, lay in the fact that Rapp had corrupted one of Juarez’s precious recruits. Rapp had gotten Brooks involved in what could quickly become a criminal investigation. If this went south it would be a big blow to the Clandestine Service. Juarez might even lose his job over the deal.
“The videotape,” McMahon said, “from the Starbucks…is not enough evidence to convict this guy. The attorney general is losing his mind over this. You told us he was the guy.”
“He is,” Kennedy said calmly. She’d had almost a day now to consider the situation, and she was slightly embarrassed that she had allowed her own emotions to cloud her judgment. First off, getting upset with Rapp served no purpose. She should have known that after all these years. He was going to do what he thought best regardless of orders from HQ.
“Can you back that up?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Shit.” McMahon had his dark blue pinstripe suit jacket open and a hand on each hip. A bulky pistol sat on his right hip and his badge was clipped to his belt above his left front pocket. As a general rule he didn’t carry his passport sized FBI credentials. Some people acted funny around guns, so he kept his badge displayed.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” the agent continued. “The press conference is in less than three hours, and I need some real evidence. All I’ve got at the moment is a shot-up Greek guy who keeps claiming he was kidnapped and tortured. This could get really embarrassing.”
Kennedy wondered if that was what Rapp was up to. Punishing everyone for going public with this.
“Let’s get Brooks in here,” Juarez said. “She knows what the hell is going on.”
“Are you sure about that?” Kennedy asked.
“Hell yes. She told me herself that Mitch told her to say nothing. He said he would show up in a few days and take care of everything, and in the meantime she was to keep her mouth shut.”
“I know that’s what he told her, but that doesn’t mean she knows what he’s up to.”
“How about simply telling us what in the hell really happened in Cyprus?” Juarez asked.
“How about telling me anything?” McMahon jumped in. “She shows up at Andrews yesterday in a white rental van, from where, we have no idea. We were expecting them to land on a plane. My people ran down the plates on the van. It was rented by some LLC out of Baltimore that exists on paper only. We checked the gate logs at the base. She showed up five minutes before the handoff. We called Customs and Immigration. They show no record of Brooks or Rapp entering the country yesterday. I don’t suppose either of you would like to tell me what aliases they were traveling under?”
Kennedy and Juarez didn’t bother looking at each other. They both shook their heads in response to the agent’s question.
McMahon looked down at the ground and grabbed the back of his neck with his right hand. After a moment he said, “Now I might not care how in the hell they got this guy from Cyprus to the States without clearing him through customs, but I know a whole lot of other people who are going to care. People at Justice are already asking questions, and I’m sure when this guy gets a lawyer he is going to want to review the chain of custody. Add to that the press and you guys are going to get a whole lot of unwanted attention. My office tells me they’re already receiving calls. They’re going to be all over you by this afternoon.”
That was it, Kennedy thought to herself. This was exactly what Mitch was worried about. Their tactics and methods being exposed. So the question she had for herself was, What was Rapp really up to? Was he destroying evidence or collecting evidence? Or both?
“I say we get her in here.” Juarez said in an impatient voice.
“Brooks,” Kennedy replied.
“Yes.”
“I think you two are being a bit hard on her.”
Juarez’s eyes practically popped out of his head. “Hard on her? I’ve had the kid gloves on until now. I’m half tempted to get the Office of Security in here. Have them turn on the hot lights and polygraph her ass.”
Kennedy placed her glasses on top of a leather briefing folder. She used both hands to square them up perfectly in the center of the smooth, brown surface. Kennedy had thought Juarez would threaten to do this, but she wondered how much of it was bluster. The move carried with it certain risks. The Office of Security would start a paper trail that just might get the Inspector General’s Office involved, and then they were only one step away from the Department of Justice and the FBI.
“I think she’s been put in a very difficult position.”
“What’s so difficult about being debriefed by your boss?”
“I think everyone needs to take a step back and look at this from a different angle.”
“What angle could that possibly be?” Juarez asked sarcastically.
Kennedy shot him a look and said, “Mitch’s angle.”
“Irene,” Juarez’s jaw was clenched, “I have a lot of respect for Mitch, and he has pulled some pretty goofy shit over the years, but this one takes the prize.”
“You were as upset as I’ve ever seen you yesterday,” McMahon said. “Why the hell are you all of a sudden defending him?”
Kennedy leaned back in her chair and glanced out the window before answering. “I was distracted yesterday. I think I made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“I did not advise the president as closely as I should have on this.”
“How so?”
“Going public…” Kennedy shook her head, “this fast…bad idea.”
“Mitch told you this was the guy. One hundred percent. The smart thing for you to do was turn him over.”
“We could have waited…should have waited a week or two, or maybe we should have just let Mitch take care of the problem for us.”
“I didn’
t hear that,” McMahon said as he shut his eyes tightly.
“What’s done is done,” Juarez added. “What I want are answers. I’m willing to give Brooks one more chance. Let’s bring her in here, lay out her options, and get to the bottom of this. I want to know what in the hell Mitch is trying to hide.”
Kennedy studied Juarez for a moment and then looked to McMahon.
“Would it help,” McMahon asked, “if I left?”
“Probably,” Juarez answered.
“I don’t think it’s going to matter.”
“Why?” asked Juarez.
“I don’t think she’s going to talk, but we’ll give it a shot.” Kennedy leaned forward and hit the intercom button on her phone. “Sheila, would you please send Ms. Brooks in?”
Kennedy stood and pointed to the couch and chairs opposite her desk. She read the look of disapproval on Juarez’s face. “We’re going to try this the civilized way first.”
“Fine,” Juarez grumbled. “You go ahead and play the good cop. Skip can play the bad cop. I’ll just play the boss from hell. In my current mood it won’t require much acting.”
28
WASHINGTON, DC
The cyber café was one of those coffee shops that you could find in virtually every hip counterculture neighborhood across America. Each one, a stand-alone sole proprietorship or maybe an LLC with ownership of a half dozen shops at the most. They were all different, yet the same. United in their hatred of Starbucks, these shops were a blind chain with an unintended common theme. They were adorned with rickety, second-hand furniture, old laminate countertops, and a wait staff who tended to be open to body piercings, tattoos, and bad hairdos. The shops provided free Internet connection, service with an attitude, and a refuge from America’s shallow thirst for comfort through the similarity of franchise hell.
This particular place was called Café Wired. A big hand-painted brown and white sign hung above the large glass window that fronted the sidewalk. The name was bracketed on one side by a steaming cup of coffee and the other by a laptop. There were now three of the shops in the city. One in Bethesda, another by American University, and this one a few blocks away from Howard University, not far from Rapp’s condo.
Rapp was a silent investor in the cafés. He and his brother Steven had put up the money, and Marcus Dumond ran the places. Rapp had worked with the cyber genius going on five years now. Dumond had attended MIT with Rapp’s brother. While earning his master’s degree in computer science at MIT, Dumond had managed to get into some pretty big trouble with the feds. To win a bet with some of his fellow geniuses, he hacked into one of New York’s largest banks and then moved over a million dollars into several overseas accounts. He wasn’t caught because he left a trail. He was caught because he and his friends got drunk one night and began bragging about how easy it had been. A fellow student got wind of it and turned him in to the authorities. Dumond was facing serious jail time. That was until Steven Rapp called his brother to see if he could intervene.
The CIA doesn’t like to advertise the fact that they employ some of the world’s best computer hackers. These men and women spend their days and nights trying to sneak undetected into the networks of America’s adversaries. More often than not they are successful, and they are one of the country’s best-kept secrets. Dumond’s skills in this arena were unsurpassed. He split time between the cyber unit and the Counterterrorism Center.
Rapp circled the café twice before entering. He checked all the windows, the cars, and the people on the corner waiting for the bus. It was more out of habit than any real fear of being followed. He opened the door to the coffee shop and walked straight to the back, past the line of customers waiting for their morning fuel. The women’s room was on the left. The men’s on the right. Directly ahead was a door with a security camera and call box mounted to the side. Rapp pressed the button and put his hand on the doorknob. A second later a buzzing noise announced that the door was open.
Rapp went down the narrow stairs to the basement and past two open office doors to a third heavy steel door with rusted rivets ringing the perimeter. This one also had a call box next to it. Before Rapp could push the button he heard the buzzing release of the lock. He leaned into the heavy door, twisted the handle, and entered.
The first thing that Rapp noticed was that the room was a good ten degrees warmer than the rest of the basement. He’d been down here before. Dumond kept an apartment on the second floor, but for security reasons he kept his nerve center locked up in the basement. Rapp was not a detail guy. At least not when it came to computers. To him, they were like cars. Corvette, Ferrari, Mustang GT, Mercedez—when you got to the high end how much did a tenth of a second really matter in a zero to sixty challenge? He knew it mattered to the purists, just like he knew processor speed really mattered to Dumond, but in Rapp’s case—who really cared? One look at a red Ferrari and you’d have to be an idiot to not instinctively know it was fast. No need to look under the hood. Same with Dumond’s setup. All you had to do was look at the four flat-screen monitors that sat atop the half-circle desk, and you knew whatever was under the desk had to be the best that money could buy.
“How are things going?” Rapp asked as he took off his trench coat.
“Fine,” Dumond answered as he took a final drag off a cigarette and stabbed it out in a large glass ashtray. The twenty-nine-year-old African American exhaled a cloud of smoke and said, “The blogosphere is on fire with news that the FBI is going to announce the arrest of the primary suspect in the motorcade attack.”
“Did you leak the name?”
Dumond nodded. “Drudge just ran with it. It’ll be on the wire within the hour.”
“What about the Greek embassy?” Rapp laid his trench coat over the back of a chair.
“I already made the call.”
“You disguised your voice…right?” Rapp approached the desk.
“No,” Dumond said in a sarcastic voice. “I gave them my name and phone number in case they needed to get a hold of me.” He snatched his pack of cigarettes from the desk and fished out a stick.
“You’re a brave man this morning.”
“What the fuck do you expect from me?” Dumond stuck the cigarette between his lips and started searching for his lighter. The desk was covered with keyboards, mice, disks, memory sticks, card readers, speakers, and other odds and ends. “I’ve been up all night working on this shit, and you won’t even tell me what’s going on.” He found his lighter under a pile of disks in clear jewel cases and lit his cigarette.
“I told you what’s going on. It’s classic disinformation. We’re going to get them leaning in one direction and once they’re committed we’re going to deliver a knockout punch.”
“You and your sports analogies.” Dumond frowned at Rapp and then went to work on one of the keyboards.
“Man, you are one crabby cuss this morning.”
“Whereas you are just a breath of fresh air.”
Rapp smiled. He truly liked Dumond. “Thank you for working on this. I owe you.”
“You’re damn right you do. I’ve been up all night and I have to be at work in an hour and a half.”
“All right,” Rapp put his hands up in surrender. “I owe you big-time. The next time you get arrested, I’ll bail you out.” The comment was a reference to the fact that if it weren’t for Rapp, Dumond would be sitting in a federal prison.
“How long are you going to hold that over my head?”
“I’m not. Now give me the full update.”
“I posted twenty-six blogs last night, under ten separate pseudonyms. I started out responding to other bloggers who were reporting that the assassin was caught. You could tell by most of them that the leaks were coming out of the White House. Traffic was pretty hot on the subject. At five this morning I started putting it out there that there were major problems with the case against this guy…signs of torture, no real evidence, the fact that he was grabbed without alerting the Greek authorities.”
“Who did you say your sources were?”
“All anonymous. State Department, Justice, FBI, CIA. I spread it around.”
“Did you float my name?” Rapp asked.
“Not yet. I thought you wanted me to hold off on that.”
“I did. When we finish up with this next thing, go ahead and leak it.”
Dumond studied him for a second. “I have no idea what you are up to.”
“You’ll see soon enough. When was the last time you spoke with Hacket and Wicker?”
“About thirty minutes ago.”
“And?”
“They dumped the bodies at Gazich’s house and left the gun there. They’re outside the bank right now waiting for you to call.”
They had found a safety deposit box key along with a file of financial documents at Gazich’s office. One of the banks listed in the file was the Hellenic Bank of Cyprus. Dumond penetrated the bank’s network and found out that they had a safety deposit box registered under the name of Alexander Deckas. While he was inside the network he also collected some additional information.
Dumond handed Rapp a file. “The president of the bank is Manos Kapodistras. He has a little more than three hundred thousand dollars in cash deposits at the bank. In addition to that it looks like his ownership is about fifteen percent.”
“Foreign deposits?”
“A lot of Saudi money.”
“Anyone we know?”
“About a fifth of the royal family.”
Rapp glanced at the file and then asked, “Anything unusual?”
“Doesn’t appear to be, but these bankers can be pretty sneaky with their money.”
“Your advice?”
Dumond took a drag and said, “Play it straight up. Tell him in his line of work his reputation is everything. We can either do this in a very private manner or a very public one.”
Rapp nodded and then closed the file. “All right…let’s call him.”