Vince Flynn is an international No. 1 bestseller, published in 20 countries. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and three children. Visit his website at www.vinceflynn.com




Also by Vince Flynn

American Assassin

Pursuit of Honour

Extreme Measures

Protect and Defend

Act of Treason

Consent to Kill

Memorial Day

Executive Power

Separation of Power

The Third Option

Transfer of Power

Term Limits




First published in the USA by Emily Bestler Books/Atria Books, 2012


A division of Simon and Schuster, Inc.


First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012


A CBS COMPANY

Copyright © Vince Flynn, 2012

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.


No reproduction without permission.


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Hardback ISBN 978-0-85720-866-8


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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

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To


Dr. Eugene Kwon and Dr. Bill Utz


and


Dr. Mike Nanne




ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOR some time now, I’ve been fond of saying I want to make it through life with one agent, one editor, one publisher, and one wife. I like working with people I admire and trust, and I like stability. When you find out you have cancer, this philosophy takes on a much deeper meaning. Instead of facing the scariest moment of your life alone you find yourself surrounded by people you care about and who genuinely care for you. To my agent, Sloan Harris, who is no stranger to this fight, you have brought the same laser-like focus to my health issues that you have used to successfully manage the Rapp franchise. Your opinions and insights continue to give me great comfort. To Kristyn Keene at ICM, your levity is always welcome, and to Chris Silbermann, thank you for continuing to navigate the Hollywood minefield.

To my editor and publisher, Emily Bestler, thank you for your usual grace and calm during a trying year; you make it all much easier than it should be. To Kate Cetrulo and Caroline Porter at Emily Bestler Books for making the trains run on time. To Jeanne Lee for another great cover. To Al Madocs, sorry for putting you through the wringer yet again. To David Brown for your professionalism, unbelievable work ethic, and great sense of humor. To Ariele Fredman for keeping Mr. Brown out of trouble and your much-needed wit. To Judith Curr and Louise Burke for your divergent and successful styles of publishing. To Anthony Ziccardi, Michael Selleck, and the great sales force at Simon & Schuster, and to Carolyn Reidy one of the smartest people in publishing. You all make me feel like I am part of the S&S family and for that I am extremely grateful.

On the medical front I have a long list of people to thank. To Dr. Jason Reed for your concern and diligence. To Dr. Bill Utz who made the diagnosis and has continued to quarterback my care for the last year. Your professionalism, faith, and intensity help me sleep better each and every night. And to the rest of the staff at Urology Associates, especially Jim and Adriane. To Dr. Badrinath Konety at the University of Minnesota Center for Prostate Cancer, for being the first person to give me hope. I’m not sure I will ever be able to fully express my gratitude for the gift you gave my wife and me when we needed it most. To Dr. Eugene Kwon at the Mayo Clinic: you are a rock star. In addition to being possibly the smartest person I have ever met, you might also be one of the funniest. Knowing you are down in Rochester on the front lines looking for a way to kill this cancer allows me to do things like write this book. To Dr. Douglas Olson at the Fairview Southdale Radiation Therapy Center and Dr. Richard Diaz and your phenomenal staff, for making eight weeks of radiation a breeze.

I have received countless prayers and well wishes from fans and friends, and they have meant a great deal to my family and me. This fight can be pretty lonely at times, and knowing that you are all out there makes it a little less scary. I am blessed to have grown up in a big family and in a town where people really care about each other. To Tom Tracy, who I think may have taken the news harder than me, I am lucky to still call you my best friend after thirty-one years. Thank you for starting Mitch Rapp & the Killer Moustaches for Movember and raising a nice chunk of change for prostate cancer research. To Mike Dougherty, who was told he was going to die from prostate cancer more than a decade and half ago. Thank you for showing me what can happen when a stubborn Irishman refuses to quit. To Gary Petrucci, who is a one-man research machine. Thank you for keeping me abreast of all the latest and greatest in the fight to find a cure for prostate cancer. To Eric and Kathy Schneeman for all the great times at the Pub. You have been a godsend to my family this past year. To Jodi Bakkegard and Dennis Gudim for keeping me as healthy as possible. And to Dr. Mike Nanne for showing me how to deal with cancer with faith and courage.

To Ed Kocourek, my unofficial spiritual mentor. Thank you for pushing me when I needed it. The Adoration Chapel at St. Joseph’s has become a place of great beauty and serenity in my life. To Father John Malone, Father Peter Laird, and Archbishop Emeritus Harry Flynn for your prayers and guidance. I am a God-fearing soul and always have been. I choose to believe, and to all of you who have sent your prayers and well wishes, thank you.

Last, but definitely not least, to my wife Lysa. I don’t know how people go through this alone. I am blessed in many ways but none more so than having you as my wife. Thank you for being there every step of the way with your grace, perspective, and love. You are the best.






CONTENTS

PRELUDE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48




PRELUDE

THE man flew through the air, propelled by one of the other recruits. CIA handler Irene Kennedy watched from inside the house with casual interest as he failed to tuck and roll. He hit the ground flat and hard—the kind of impact that more than likely knocked the wind out of him, maybe even bruised a rib. Kennedy pursed her lips and calculated his odds of making it through the remaining eight weeks of the training program. She’d seen so many men roll through here that she could handicap them like a Vegas bookie. This one she gave a less than 10 percent chance.

Kennedy’s thoughts, however, were not really with this batch of recruits. She was more concerned with a certain man who had waltzed through the rigorous training program a little more than a year ago. Mitch Rapp had been her rookie, and in the year since they had unleashed him on the purveyors of terrorism, he had left a steady trail of bodies from Geneva to Istanbul to Beirut and beyond. His record to date was perfect, and that in its own way added to Kennedy’s tension. No one was perfect. Sooner or later, no matter how much talent they had, the mighty got tripped up. To complicate the odds, Kennedy had pushed to allow him to operate on his own. No backup. Just an advance team to scout things out and then he moved in all by his lonesome to do the dirty work up close and personal. No team members to bail his ass out if things went south. Rapp had argued that a small footprint would mean less chance of being caught.

Instinctively, Kennedy liked the simplicity. She’d seen more than her fair share of operations that had become so cumbersome in personnel and scope that they never got off the ground. Rapp had successfully argued that if he failed he was just one man with a foreign passport who could never be traced back to Langley. Hurley the hard-assed spook and trainer, had pointed out that his little game worked only if he was dead. If they took him alive, he’d talk, just like everyone did, and then their exposure would be horrible. Theirs was not a risk-free business, however, and in the end Thomas Stansfield was willing to roll the dice on Rapp. The young operative had proven himself very resourceful and Stansfield needed to cross more names off his list of most wanted terrorists.

This mission was different, though. The stakes were considerably higher. It was one thing when Rapp was lurking about some Third World country practicing his craft, but at this very moment, he was about to do something very illegal, and unsanctioned in a country where he could not afford to make even the slightest mistake.

So intense was Kennedy’s concentration that she hadn’t heard the question from the man sitting behind the desk. She brushed a strand of her shoulder-length auburn hair behind her ear and said, “Excuse me?”

Dr. Lewis had been studying her for the last few minutes. Kennedy was a complex, confident, and extremely guarded professional. It had become an occupational obsession for Lewis to find out what made her tick. “You’re worried about him.”

Irene Kennedy’s face remained neutral despite the fact that she was irritated by her colleague’s ability to read her thoughts. “Who?”

“You know who,” Dr. Lewis said, his soft blue eyes coaxing her along.

Kennedy shrugged as if it was a small thing. “I worry about every operation I’m in charge of.”

“It seems you worry more about the ones he’s involved in.”

Kennedy considered the unique individual whom she had found in Upstate New York. As much as she’d like to deny it, Lewis’s assessment of her concern over Rapp was accurate. Kennedy couldn’t decide if it was the man, or the increasingly dangerous nature of the operations they’d been giving him, but in either case, she did not want to discuss the matter with Lewis.

“I’ve found,” Lewis said in a carefree tone, “that I worry about him less than most. Always have, I think.”

Kennedy flipped the comment around in her head. She could easily take it two ways—maybe more. “It’s a lot easier when you’re sitting on that side of the desk.” Kennedy flashed him a rare smile. “I’m his handler. I put him in these situations, and I’m his only lifeline should something go wrong. I would think that clinically”—she raised an eyebrow, mimicking one of Lewis’s overused facial expressions—“even you would understand that.”

The shrink stroked his bottom lip with his forefinger and said, “Worrying about someone, or something, can be normal . . . and even healthy, but if taken too far . . .” Lewis shook his head and made a sour face. “Definitely not good.”

Here we go, Kennedy thought to herself. This was not an accidental conversation. Lewis had been thinking about this for some time, plotting his line of questioning. Kennedy knew from experience that to try to run from the tête-à-tête would only make it worse. Lewis was patient and tenacious, and his reports were given serious weight by the deputy director of operations. The doctor would zero in on a problem and pepper you with questions until he was satisfied. Kennedy decided to lob the ball back onto his side of the net. “So you think I worry too much.”

“I didn’t say that,” the doctor said with an easy tone and a soft shake of his head.

“But you implied it,” Kennedy said.

“It was merely a question.”

“A question that you asked because you think you’ve noticed something and you’re worried about me. And since you initiated it, I would appreciate it if you would explain yourself rather than treat this like one of your therapy sessions.”

Lewis sighed. He’d seen Kennedy get this way, but never with him. Usually it was with Stan Hurley, who was exceedingly adept at getting under people’s skin. She was always calm and analytical in her dealings with Lewis, so the fact that she was so quick to anger now was proof that his concerns were valid. “I think when it comes to a certain operative . . . you worry too much.”

“Rapp?” Kennedy asked.

“Correct.”

“Please don’t give me some psychobabble that you think I’m in love with him.” Kennedy shook her head as if anything so humdrum was beneath her. “You know that’s not how I work.”

Lewis dismissed the idea with the back of his hand. “I agree. That is not my concern.”

“Then what is?”

“That you do not give the man his credit.”

“Credit? Credit for what?”

“Let’s start with the fact that he came down here a little more than a year ago, without any military experience, and bested every man we put in front of him, including your Uncle Stan. His ability to learn, and do so at an incredibly rapid pace, is unlike anything I have ever seen.” Lewis’s voice grew in intensity. “And he does it in every field of discipline.”

“Not every field of discipline. His marks in geopolitics and diplomatic affairs are dismal.”

“That’s because he sees those fields as an utter waste of his time, and I don’t necessarily disagree with him.”

“I thought we wanted well-rounded people to come out of this place.”

Lewis shrugged his shoulders. “Mental stability matters more to me than well-rounded. After all, we’re not asking him to negotiate a treaty.”

“No, but we need him to be aware of the big picture.”

“Big picture.” Lewis frowned. “I think Mitch would argue that he’s the only one around here who keeps his focus on the big picture.”

Kennedy was a woman in the ultimate man’s world, and she deeply disliked it when her colleagues treated her as if everything needed to be explained to her. “Really,” she said with chaste insincerity.

“Your man has a certain aptitude. A certain ability that is heightened by the fact that he doesn’t allow extraneous facts to get in the way.”

Kennedy sighed. Normally she would never let her frustration show, but she was tired. “I know you think I can read minds, but today that skill seems to have left me. Could you please get to the point?”

“You do look more tired than normal.”

“Why, thank you. And you look like you’ve put on a few pounds.”

Lewis smiled. “No need to hurt my feelings, just because you’re worried about him.”

“You are a master at deflection.”

“It is my job to observe.” He swiveled his chair and looked at the eight men and the two instructors who were putting them through the basics of hand-to-hand combat. “Observe all of you. Make sure no one has a mental breakdown and runs off the reservation.”

“And who watches you?”

Lewis smiled. “I’m not under the same stress,” the doctor said as he spun back to face Kennedy. “As you said, he is your responsibility.”

Kennedy mulled that one over for a second. She couldn’t disagree, so she kept her mouth shut. Plus the good doctor excelled at compartmentalizing the rigors of their clandestine operation.

“I’m looking out for you,” Lewis said in his understanding therapist tone. “This double life that you’ve been living is not healthy. The mental strain is something that you think you can manage, and I thought you could as well, but recently, I’ve begun to have some doubts.”

Kennedy felt a twist in her gut. “And have you shared these doubts with anyone?” Specifically she was thinking of Thomas Stansfield.

“Not yet, but at some point I am bound to pass along my concerns.”

Kennedy felt a sense of relief, even if it was just a brief reprieve. She knew the only way to avoid a bad personnel report was to allay Lewis’s concerns. And the only way to do that was to talk about them. “This aptitude that you say he has, would you care to share it with me?”

Lewis hesitated as if he was trying to find the most delicate way to say something that was brutally indelicate. With a roll of his head he said, “I have tried to get inside Rapp’s mind, and there are days where I swear he’s so refreshingly honest that I think I know what makes him tick, and then . . .” Lewis’s voice trailed off.

“And then, what?”

“There are other days where I can’t get past those damn dark eyes of his and that lopsided grin that he uses to defuse anyone who goes poking around in his business.”

“That’s the aptitude that puts you at ease? His lopsided grin?”

“No,” Lewis scoffed. “It’s far more serious than his ability to be open one moment and then impenetrable the next, although that may have a hand in how he deals with everything. I’m talking about the very core of all of this. Why are we here? Why have we secretly funneled over fifty million dollars into this operation? I’m talking about the fact that he is a one-man wrecking ball. That he has methodically, in a little over a year, accomplished more than we have accomplished in the last decade. And let’s be brutally honest with each other.” Lewis held up a finger. “The ‘what’ that we are talking about is the stone-cold fact that he is exceedingly good at hunting down and killing men.”

Kennedy did not look at Lewis, but she nodded. They had all come to the same realization months ago. That was why they had turned him loose and allowed him to work on his own.

“I’m here,” Lewis continued, “to observe and make sure we have the right people and that their minds can handle the unique stress of this job. I have stress, you have stress, but I doubt ours compares to the stress of operating alone, often behind enemy lines, and hunting down a man and killing him.”

“So you’re worried that he’s going to snap on us.”

“Not at the moment. In fact, I think he has coped extraordinarily well with the rigors of his new job. I’ve kept a close eye on him. When he’s back here, he sleeps like a baby. His head hits the pillow, sixty seconds later he’s out and he sleeps straight through the night.”

Kennedy had wondered about this same thing. Not every operative handled the taking of another human being’s life with such ease. “So how does he deal with it . . . the blood on his hands?” she asked.

“He is a linear creature, which means he doesn’t allow a lot of ancillary issues to muddy the waters of his conscience. These men . . . the ones we target . . . they all decided of their own volition to get involved in plots to kill innocent civilians. In Rapp’s mind—and this isn’t me guessing, he’s expressed this very clearly—these men need to be punished.”

Kennedy shifted in her chair. “Simple revenge.”

“He says retribution. The distinction is slight, but I see his point.”

“Given the loss of his girlfriend, I don’t find that particularly troubling. After all, this is a job that requires a unique motivation.”

“Yes it does, but his runs deep. He thinks if these men go unpunished, it will only embolden them to kill more people. To screw up more people’s lives,” Lewis answered.

“You’ll get no argument from me. Nor from our boss, for that matter.”

Lewis smiled. “There’s one more thing, something that adds a unique twist.”

“What’s that?”

“He wants them to know he’s coming after them.”

“Theory or fact?”

“A bit of both. He knows that he can make them jumpy. Keep them up at night worrying when he’s going to show up. He wants them to fear his existence.”

“He told you this?” Kennedy asked, more than a bit surprised.

“Parts of it. The rest I pieced together,” Lewis said with a nod.

“And why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m telling you right now.”

Kennedy moved to the edge of her chair. “I mean, why didn’t you tell me when you first learned about it?”

“I told Thomas,” Lewis said, covering his bases.

“And what did he say?”

“He thought about it for a long moment and then said making these guys lose a little sleep might not be the worst thing.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Kennedy pressed her palm against her forehead. “As his handler, don’t you think you should let me in on stuff like this?”

“I’m not sure I understand your concern. I think he’s fine, and Thomas does as well.”

Kennedy pinched the bridge of her nose in an effort to stifle the headache she felt coming. “This isn’t the NFL. We don’t trash-talk. We don’t taunt the other team in order to throw them off their game. My men need to be ghosts. They need to sneak into a country, quietly do their job, and then disappear.”

“Irene, I think you are exaggerating your concerns. The enemy knows something is afoot. Bodies are piling up at an unusual clip, and if the fear Rapp is generating causes some of these men to be a bit jumpy”—Lewis shrugged—“well then, so be it.”

“So what in the hell are you trying to tell me . . . that you’re okay with Rapp, but you’re worried about me?” Kennedy asked, the suspicion in her voice obvious.

“I’m okay with both of you, but I do think you worry too much.”

“I’m worried about him because he’s about to kill a high-ranking official in the capital of one of our closest allies and if he screws up, the blowback could be so bad every single last one of us will end up in front of a committee on Capitol Hill, be indicted, and then end up in jail.” Kennedy shook her head. “I don’t know what your shrink books have to say about all of this, but I think a fear of going to jail is a healthy thing.”

“My point, Irene, is that Rapp is good. Maybe the best I’ve ever seen, and his target is a lazy, overfed bureaucrat. Tonight will go fine. That’s not what I’m worried about.”

Kennedy was so focused on Paris that she almost missed the last part. “Then what are you worried about?”

“Mr. Rapp is unique. He has already proven his penchant for autonomy. He bristles against control, and so far, Thomas has been willing to ignore all of these little transgressions because the man is so damn good at what he does.”

“But?”

“Our country, as well as our beloved employer, has a glorious history of throwing those men who are at the tip of the spear under the proverbial bus when things get difficult. If they do that to a man like Rapp . . .” Lewis winced at the thought.

“Our country and our employer don’t even know he exists.”

“I know that, Irene. I’m looking down the road, and I’m telling you there is a real danger that at some point we might lose control of him.”

Kennedy scoffed at the idea. “I haven’t seen a single thing that could lead you to that conclusion.”

“Irene,” Lewis said in a far more serious tone, “strip it all down and what we have is a man who has been taught to kill. Kill people who have harmed innocent civilians or threatened the national security of this country. Right now, his mission is clearly focused. He’s out killing bad guys who live in foreign countries. What happens if he wakes up one day and realizes some of the bad guys are right here? Living in America, working for the CIA, working on Capitol Hill.”

“You can’t be serious?” Kennedy said, shocked by the theory.

Lewis folded his hands under his chin and leaned back in his chair. “Justice is blind, and if you train a man to become judge, jury, and executioner . . . well, then you shouldn’t be surprised if he someday fails to see the distinction between a terrorist and a corrupt, self-serving bureaucrat.”

Kennedy thought about it for a moment and then said, “I’m not sure I’m buying it.”

Lewis shrugged. “Only time will tell, but I know one thing for certain. If there comes a time where you need to neutralize him, you’d better not screw up. Because if he survives, he’ll kill every last one of us.”



CHAPTER 1

PARIS, FRANCE

RAPP secured the gray nylon rope to a cast-iron vent stack and walked to the edge of the roof. He glanced at the balcony two floors below and then looked out across the City of Light. Sunrise was a few hours off and the flow of late-night revelers had faded to a trickle. It was that rare moment of relative inactivity that even a city as vibrant as Paris fell under once each day. Every city had its own unique feel, and Rapp had learned to pay attention to the ebb and flow of their natural rhythms. They had their similarities just like people. For all of the hang-ups about individuality, few understood that for the most part, people’s actions were habitual. They slept, woke, ate, worked, ate some more, worked some more, ate again, watched TV, and then went to sleep again. It was the basic drumbeat of humanity the world over. The way people lived their lives and met their basic needs.

All men also had their own unique attributes, and these often manifested themselves in habits—habits that Rapp had learned to exploit. As a rule, the best time to strike was this witching hour, between dusk and dawn, when the overwhelming majority of the human race was asleep, or trying to sleep. The physiological reasons were obvious. If it took world-class athletes hours to warm up before a major event, how would a man defend himself when yanked from deep sleep? However, Rapp could not always choose the appointed hour, and occasionally a target’s habits created an opening that was so painfully obvious, he simply couldn’t ignore the opportunity.

Three weeks earlier Rapp had been in Athens. His target walked the same bustling sidewalk every morning from his apartment to his office. Rapp had considered shooting him on the sidewalk, as there was plenty of cover and distraction. It wouldn’t have been difficult, but witnesses were always a concern, and a police officer could always stumble by at the wrong moment. As he studied his target, he noticed another habit. After arriving at work, the man had one more cup of coffee and then went down the hall with his newspaper and took a prolonged visit to the men’s room.

Other than catching people asleep, the next best thing was catching them with their pants down. On the fourth day, Rapp waited in the middle stall of three and at the appointed hour his target sat down on his right. Rapp stood on the toilet seat, leaned over the divider, called out the man’s name, and then after their eyes met, he smiled and sent a single 9mm hollow-tipped round through the top of the man’s head. He fired one more kill shot into the man’s brainpan for good measure and calmly left the building. Thirty minutes later, he was on a ferry slicing through the warm morning air of the Aegean Sea, headed for the island of Crete.

Most of the kills had been like that. Unsuspecting fools who thought themselves safe after years of the United States doing little or nothing to pursue them for their involvement in various terrorist attacks. Rapp’s singular goal was to take the fight to these men. Bleed them until they began to have doubts, until they lay awake at night wondering if they were next. It had become his mission in life. Inaction was what had emboldened these men to continue with their plots to attack innocent civilians. The belief that they were secure to continue to wage their war of terror had given them a smug confidence. Rapp was single-handedly replacing that confidence with fear.

By now, they were aware that something was wrong. Too many men had been shot in the head in the last year for it to be a coincidence. Rapp’s handler had reported the rumors. Most suspected that the Israelis had resurrected one of their hit teams, and that was fine with Rapp—the more disinformation the better. He was not looking for credit. In spite of his hot streak, tonight would be it for a while. The powers that be in Virginia were getting nervous. Too many people were talking. Too many foreign intelligence agencies were allocating assets to look into this rash of deaths among the world’s most notorious terrorists and their network of financiers and arms dealers. Rapp was to return stateside for some rest and relaxation when he finished this one. At least that’s what Rapp’s handler had told him. Even after a quick year, however, he knew how things worked. Rest and relaxation meant that they wanted to observe him. Make sure some part of his psyche hadn’t wandered down a dark corridor never to return. The thought brought a smile to Rapp’s face. Killing these assholes was the most therapeutic thing he’d ever done in his life. It was more effective than a decade of psychotherapy.

He placed his hand over his left ear and focused on the tiny transmitter that was relaying the sounds of the luxury hotel suite two floors below. Just like the night before, and the night before that, he could hear the portly Libyan wheezing and snoring. The man was a three-pack-a-day chain smoker. If Rapp could only chase him up a flight of stairs, he might be able to accomplish his task.

Rapp followed a delivery van as it quietly passed beneath on the Quai Voltaire. Something was bothering him, but he couldn’t place it. He scanned the street for the slightest evidence that anything was out of place and then turned his attention to the tree-lined walking paths that bordered the Seine River. They too were empty. All was as it should be, but still something was gnawing at him. Maybe things had been too easy of late, one kill after another, city after city, and not so much as a single close call. The law of averages told him that sooner or later, something would go wrong, and he would end up in a jam that might land him in a foreign jail or possibly cost him his life. Those two thoughts were always in the back of his mind, and depending on what country he was in, he wasn’t sure which would be his preference.

There was little room for fear and doubt in what he did. There should be caution and a keen eye to detail, but fear and doubt could incapacitate. He could stand up here all night thinking up excuses not to proceed. Stan Hurley, the tough SOB who had trained him, had warned him about the pitfalls of paralysis by analysis. Rapp thought about the stern warning that Hurley had given him and decided it was more than likely his handler’s anxiety. She had warned him that if the slightest thing didn’t seem right, he was to abort the mission. An American could not be caught doing this kind of dirty work in Paris. Not ever, and especially not now, given the current political climate.

In the big picture, the target was a link. Another name to cross off his list, but to Rapp it was always more personal than the big picture. He wanted to make every last one of these men pay for what they’d done. Each kill would grow more difficult, more dangerous, and it didn’t bother Rapp in the least. He welcomed the challenge. In fact, he took sincere joy in the fact that these assholes were looking over their shoulder each day and going to sleep every night wondering who was hunting them.

Rapp asked himself one more time if he should be concerned that the Libyan was traveling without security. There was a good chance that the man felt safe in his position as his country’s oil minister. As an important member of the diplomatic community, he probably thought himself above the dirty games of terrorists and assassins. Well, Rapp thought to himself, once a terrorist, always a terrorist. Dress him up in a suit and tie and put him up in a thousand-dollar-a-night suite in Paris, and he was still a terrorist.

Rapp scanned the street and listened to the Libyan snoring like a pig. After half a minute, he made up his mind. The man would not see another sunrise. Rapp began to move in an efficient, almost robotic way as he went over his gear one last time. His silenced Beretta was secured in a shoulder holster under his right arm; two extra magazines were safely tucked away under his left arm; a double-edged four-inch combat knife was sheathed at the small of his back; and a smaller 9mm pistol was strapped to his right ankle. These were merely the offensive weapons he’d brought along. There was a small med kit, a radio that was tuned to the hotel’s security channel, flex cuffs, and a perfectly forged set of documents that said he was a Palestinian recently immigrated from Amman, Jordan. And then there was the bulletproof vest. Wearing it was one of several things that had been beaten into him during his seemingly never-ending training.

Rapp flipped up the collar on his black jacket and pulled a thin black balaclava over his face. He hefted the coil of climbing rope, looked over the edge of the building, and said to himself, “Two shots to the head.” It was a bit redundant, but that was the point, and the essence of what this entire exercise was about.

Rapp gently let the rope play its way out and then swung both legs over the lip of the roof. In one smooth move, he hopped off the ledge and spun 180 degrees. His gloved hands clamped onto the rope and slowed his descent until he had dropped fifteen feet and he could reach out and put one foot on the railing of the balcony. Holding firmly to the rope, he gently stepped down onto the small black iron grating. He was careful to keep himself off to one side despite the fact that the blackout drapes were pulled. Dropping to a knee, he took the rope and brought it around the railing so it would be available should he need to make a quick exit. He had disabled the lock on the balcony door when he’d planted the listening device two days earlier. If there was time, he would retrieve the device, but it was nothing special. Rapp always made sure to use devices that couldn’t be traced back to one of the high-end manufacturers that Langley used.

He had the layout of the suite memorized. It was one big room with a sitting area on the left and king-sized platform bed on the other. Rapp listened to the noises on the other side of the doors. The prostitute was more than likely there, but Rapp couldn’t hear her over the obnoxious snoring and wheezing of the Libyan. Everything was as it should be. Rapp drew his Beretta and slowly began to place pressure on the brass door handle with his gloved hand. He moved it from the three o’clock position down to five, and then it released without so much as a click.

Rapp pulled the door toward him and swung it flat against the side of the building. He placed his free hand on the seam of the blackout curtains and pushed through in a low crouch, his pistol up and sweeping from left to right. It was six steps from the balcony to where his target was sleeping. The bed was up so high that the platform had a step that wrapped around three sides. A massive, gaudy mirror served as the headboard. The elevation put the target at waist height for the six-foot-one Rapp. With the tip of the silencer only four feet from the Libyan’s head, Rapp stole a quick glance in hopes that he could locate the prostitute. The best he could do was get a sense that she was somewhere on the other side, buried under a jumble of pillows and blankets. He would never shoot her, but he might have to pistol-whip her in the event she woke up and started screaming.

Rapp moved a half step closer and leveled his weapon. He placed the orange dot of his front sight on the bridge of the man’s nose and then brought the two rear dots into position. The pressure was already on the trigger, and without so much as the tiniest flash of hesitation, Rapp squeezed and sent a bullet into the man’s head. The suppressor jumped one inch, fell back in line, and Rapp fired the second shot.

He looked down at the Libyan. The second shot had enlarged the dime-sized hole by half. Death was instantaneous, which meant that the snoring had stopped. In the new silence of the room, Rapp’s eyes darted to the jumbled pile on the far side of the bed, and after three seconds of no movement he dropped to his knee and reached around the back of the nightstand. The fingertips of his right hand had just found what he was looking for when he felt the floor beneath him tremble. The vibration was intense enough that Rapp knew it could be caused only by one thing. He withdrew his hand, leaving the listening device where it was, and rose enough so that he could look over the bed to the hotel room’s door.

There, in the thin strip of light under the door, Rapp saw one shadow pass and then another. He cursed to himself, and was about to make a break toward the balcony, when the door crashed open, flooding the suite with a band of light. As Rapp began to drop, he saw the distinct black barrel of a submachine gun, and then a bright muzzle flash.



CHAPTER 2




THE room smelled. It was a brew of sweat and other odors given off by men stuffed for too long in close quarters. It was also tinged with a hint of fear. That troubled Samir Fadi deeply even though he understood the cause. They were hunting a ghost—someone who had silently and steadily begun killing their brethren nearly a year ago. Samir could not change their situation, nor could he change the facts. The longer the men waited the more bored they became, and the more bored they became, the more their minds wandered. It was not difficult to see it in their young faces as the gung-ho nature of their operation dissipated under the strain of monotony. They were each recalculating their chances for success, and the odds were moving in the wrong direction.

Samir did not fall prey to this weakness. They would meet this ghost with overwhelming firepower and they would rid their cause of a major problem, and he would be celebrated as a hero. That was no small thing for Samir. He had felt for a very long time that Allah had magnificent plans for him, and when he returned from this operation with the head of the assassin, he would bask in the glory he so rightly deserved.

Samir had been the lucky one to stumble upon the beginnings of a solution. They had all been shocked to hear that this was the work of one man. Samir had asked the most basic question, “How do you find and kill an assassin whom no one knows?” They had worked their sources across Europe and in Moscow and come up with nothing. Some on the council continued to argue that it couldn’t be one man. It had to be multiple teams operating simultaneously. The Spaniard, however, held his ground. His source was above reproach. In addition to the source, the Spaniard had gotten his hands on some of the official police reports that were filed after the various murders. The reports all pointed to the fact that it was the work of one man. A support network and funding, to be sure, but it was one man doing the killing.

The answer to Samir’s question was every bit as simple. The Spaniard told the council that they needed to set a trap. Samir had been cut out of the following sessions. Only the Executive Council was allowed to weigh in on that decision, but Samir got the gist of it. They needed a plump target to lure the assassin out into the open. That plump target was now sleeping across the hall and three doors down. Samir was not told the identity of the bait until seven days earlier, when he and his men arrived in Vienna. For four days, they had sat stuffed in a hotel room, slightly smaller than this one, and then on that fourth morning, they pulled out and left for France. They all traveled alone, dressed in suits, but on the same train. When they’d arrived in Paris they were met by the Spaniard and a trusted brother who had prepped the hotel room with weapons and surveillance equipment.

The bait had arrived by plane later that day, and after a brief lunch at the hotel, he left to do some shopping. One by one, at random intervals, Samir’s men entered the hotel and checked into different rooms on different floors. By nightfall, when the bait was out having dinner with a prostitute, they had all converged on the single room down the hall. Silenced submachine guns were waiting for them. The Spaniard and Samir both agreed that the assassin would strike at night. Most likely in the predawn hours, and it would be in the hotel suite, where he could control the situation. Samir saw the wisdom but felt the window of opportunity was too small. From sundown to sunup, he had his men on high alert. During the day, two men were always on alert, just in case. The other three men would head back to their rooms, order room service, and sleep.

After four nights in Vienna and now three in Paris, Samir could tell that the men were beginning to doubt the wisdom of the operation. The idea that they would dare question his authority upset him a great deal. He had chosen each man for his discipline and skills and above all else absolute obedience to his orders. They were told up front that this mission would require a great deal of patience. That it was likely to take several trips before the assassin showed up, but Samir and the Spaniard were adamant. The assassin would show up, and when he did, they would be ready to pounce.

Over the course of the last two months, Samir felt that he had gotten to know this assassin. He was a man of unknown nationality who had penetrated their organization and begun methodically killing off the financiers, arms dealers, foot soldiers, and facilitators who allowed their organization and sister organizations to move about Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Thanks to the Spaniard, Samir had studied five of the kills in detail and was sure he understood how the assassin thought. He was ready to face him; he just wished it would be sooner rather than later.

Samir checked his watch, looked around the room, and shook his head in disgust. There were two twin beds, and two of his men were lying on them in their street clothes, their heads propped up against the headboards. Both had dozed off, their silenced weapons resting on their laps. A third man was on a chair by the door, leaned over, with his face buried in his hands. Samir couldn’t tell, but he wouldn’t be surprised if his eyes were closed as well. The fourth man at least was sitting attentively in front of the two monitors. They provided two angles of the room down the hall. He was also wearing headphones. The first few nights they had all eagerly taken turns listening and watching while the lumpy Libyan had sex with a prostitute. Seven nights into it, the novelty had worn off. Even so, Samir did note that despite the Libyan’s apparent bad health he was extremely virile.

It caused Samir to wonder if he could do the same, and he was still not thirty. Samir was not a pious man when it came to his faith. He was a Muslim, but he left the holy prostrations to those who were more devout. He saw himself as a soldier tasked with taking Islam’s fight to the dirty Jews and the rest of the decadent West. To blend in, he needed to act like them, and if that meant drinking their liquor and sleeping with their women, then so be it. As long as insinuating himself into their culture would allow him to kill more of them, he was sure Allah would reward him.

Samir stood and stretched his neck to one side and then the other. He was somewhere in the neighborhood of five feet ten inches tall and extremely proud of his physique. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on his perfectly sculpted frame. He wore his raven-black hair midway between his ears and his neck in the fashion that was so popular with the French youth. There was a mirror over the bed and he paused to study his reflection before brushing his hair back behind each ear. He looked down at his chest under the tight white T-shirt and nodded his approval. He’d done thousands of pushups to maintain his rock-hard muscles. It made him think that it would be a good idea to have the men get up and do some pushups to get their blood flowing. By chance, he glanced at the surveillance monitors and something caught his eye. He moved quickly to the screens and shook the man who was tasked with watching them.

“Muhammad,” Samir hissed, “did you see that?”

There on the black-and-white screen a shadowy figure moved across the suite. Samir felt his throat tighten. The assassin was here. Samir turned and slapped the feet of the men on the beds. Restraining himself from yelling, he said, “He’s here. Get up, you fools.” Samir grabbed his silenced submachine gun and lined his men up, slapping and shoving them into place. Within seconds, they were in position at the door.

Samir’s heart was racing, and he could tell by the wide-eyed expressions of his men that they were going through the same thing. He placed his hand on the door handle and nodded once before yanking it open. The men rushed past him exactly as they’d practiced, into the hallway, running toward the suite on the right. Samir fell in behind the last man. Up ahead he heard someone stumble and watched as Jamir caught himself before he fell. Samir cursed himself for not waking them sooner and getting them ready. He knew the assassin would strike in the predawn hours. He should have had the men ready. At least two of them had just been yanked from their dreams. He hoped they remembered to flip their safeties off before they went in. Samir took a wobbly step and realized he’d forgotten to take his own weapon off safety.

Abdul was first in line and had practiced the next move. Samir had told him not to hesitate. “Do not worry about the rest of us. Kick the door in and start firing. We will be right behind you.”

Samir was crouched near the wall, the thick black muzzle of his silencer pointed up. His finger was on the trigger, and as he watched Abdul step back to kick the door he felt a dry lump in his throat. He swallowed hard, and then the lock busted through the frame and the door flew open. Samir waited a second and then pushed his brother to join the fight. Still in the hallway, he heard the steady spit of the guns in front of him unleashing their deadly volley on the assassin, and a wolfish grin spread across his face. There was no way the killer would survive this onslaught. After tonight, Samir would become a legend among his peers.



CHAPTER 3




RAPP took cover behind the bed and its heavy platform. The distinctive spit of bullets leaving the end of a suppressor at a high rate was followed by the mirror above the bed shattering with a crash. After that, bullets began thudding into the walls, furniture, and mattress. Rapp pressed himself into the floor as he tried to count the shots. The steady thumping of one gun being fired was quickly joined by at least two more. Rapp stole a quick look at the balcony a mere six steps away and fought the urge to bolt. With this much lead flying, he would never make it. Plaster was raining down on him and he could hear bullets impacting the mattress just a few inches above his head.

Rapp pressed himself to the floor, taking cover behind the carpeted platform that elevated the bed, and told himself not to panic. His only avenue of escape was cut off, and he was cornered and outgunned. As the hail of bullets continued around him, he was reminded of something his trainer, Stan Hurley, had once said. It took Rapp a half second before he realized it was his only chance. Grabbing a spare magazine from under his left arm, he focused on the area past the foot of the bed and waited for his chance.

Even with the suppressors there was a great deal of noise, as there was a near continuous spit of bullets flying and the metallic clank of slides blowing back and slamming forward. It was considerably quieter than normal gunshots, but by no means silent. Rapp guessed they were using MP5s, or a close cousin. His mind jumped through the possibilities in a split second. MP5s almost certainly meant thirty-round magazines, and with the weapon’s rate of fire on full automatic a man could burn through all his rounds in a matter of seconds.

One of Rapp’s assets was the ability to slow things down in his mind’s eye. He’d honed it on the lacrosse pitch in high school and college. He could calculate what the other players were going to do and react. When things were tense like this, he could block out the fear and extraneous information, focus on what was important, and slow things down. Panic-induced decisions had a nasty way of leading to bad, or in this case, fatal outcomes. Rapp’s angle and concealment were as good as he could hope for, considering the fact that he’d been caught so off guard, and he used these few seconds to look at the tactical situation from 360 degrees.

The natural mistake was to get so caught up in your situation that you failed to analyze the motives, maneuvers, and talent of your opponent. The motive of this group was clear. They wanted to kill him. As to how they knew he’d be here and how they had avoided detection from the advance team, Rapp would have to search for those answers later. His mind now seized on a critical detail in the blink of an eye. They were not a trained SWAT team. Tactical teams practiced disciplined fire. They didn’t simply enter a room and begin hosing it down with bullets. From that, Rapp discerned a very comforting fact—he could kill them.

Police were off limits. He could maim or physically subdue, but he was forbidden to kill a law enforcement officer. Such were the rules of restraint that were placed on him, and he did not argue. Governments could look the other way when certain unsavory individuals were killed on their soil, but kill an innocent bystander, or worse, a law enforcement officer, and you could create an international incident that would bring the kind of attention that they could not afford.

Rapp realized quickly that these guys were making a big mistake. They assumed their overwhelming firepower would win this battle in the opening salvo, but as Hurley had told Rapp repeatedly, “You never want to blow your wad in the first few seconds of a gunfight. Better to take cover and let the other guy empty his gun.” Taking this several steps further, Hurley and the other instructors forced him to learn how to classify different guns by sound alone, and more important, to keep track of rounds fired.

The latter was hopeless in this situation. Three or more submachine guns firing on full automatic were impossible to count with any accuracy, but at this rate of fire it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that they would all be reloading in the next few seconds. Rapp anticipated what would happen next. He was on the verge of losing his cover. Rather than wait for the first shooter to move far enough into the room and get the angle on him, Rapp would broaden the angle first. He stayed low and crawled forward two feet. With his head near the edge of the foot of the platform, he could now see close to three-quarters of the room. Standing no more than fifteen feet away, he saw his first target.

The man was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and was in the midst of ejecting a long, curved magazine. Rapp swung his left arm around and shot him once in the face. He kept moving his pistol and found two more targets. One was still firing wildly and the other was reloading. Rapp shot the second man in the nose and the third man in the throat, and then before he could find the next target, bullets began thudding into the carpeting near his face. Rapp yanked his arm back and scurried in reverse for cover. He’d fired five rounds, which meant he had fourteen left in the magazine and two full magazines of eighteen rounds plus his backup gun.

Now was not the time to stay pressed against the floor. If the man or men who were left standing decided to rush him, he’d be toast. Rapp popped up onto one knee and raised the pistol above the bed. Again, firing from left to right he squeezed off six quick shots. On the fifth one, he heard a grunt and knew he’d hit someone in the torso. He moved his muzzle back a few degrees to the left and fired four more shots, and then all was quiet. Rapp paused and then squeezed off his last four shots at the door. He quickly switched out magazines, hit the slide release with his thumb, and seated a fresh round in the chamber. He brought up his gun and took a quick peek over the top of the mattress. There, silhouetted in the doorway, was a stunned man, clutching his belly with both hands. It was time to move.

Rapp stood, and as he took his first step to his left, he saw more movement in the hallway. Staying in a crouch with his gun leveled, he squeezed off one round. He buried it in the man’s chest rather than his head, sending him stumbling over the threshold. A gun appeared in the gap between the door frame and the dying man. Rapp kept moving and squeezing off shots that were splintering the edge of the door frame. When he reached the heavy curtains, he fired one more volley and then pushed through, out onto the balcony. The rope was right in front of him and he dove for it with his right hand while still holding on to his Beretta with his left.

As his gloved hand closed around the rope, he launched himself over the railing. His upper body was clear when he felt a solid punch hit him from behind. Rapp knew at that exact moment that he’d been shot, and his brain became overly focused on the fact that a piece of lead had just blasted its way into his body. The shock drew his attention away from the rope to the pain in his left shoulder, and he began to fall. Desperately, his right hand reached out in search of the black rope as he stared up at the night sky, the hard pavement rushing up to meet him from below.



CHAPTER 4




ABDUL continued straight into the room, sweeping his suppressed rifle from left to right, laying down a steady stream of bullets. Right on his heels, Jamir joined the fight, spraying his bullets in a zigzag pattern. Muhammad was next and then Samir’s brother Habib.

Samir’s feet felt heavy, as if he was suddenly wading through sand. He forced himself to move forward as the gap grew between him and his brother. For all of his bravado and threats of violence, there’d been a sliver of his ego that feared facing this assassin. He did a good job keeping it in check and made sure the men never got a whiff of it, but it weighed on him. As the line of men pressed into the suite, Samir was steadily falling behind. He listened as the hail of bullets reached a fevered pitch—objects crashing and shattering under the fusillade of metal.

Samir suddenly felt woozy. His chest tightened and his vision grew fuzzy at the edges. “Breathe,” he rebuked himself. He was almost to the door now, and he took two deep breaths as he watched his brother enter the room. Samir stopped at the door frame and listened to the barrage of bullets shredding the room. With fresh air in his lungs, he allowed a nervous smile to spread across his face. There was no way the assassin could escape this. “The hunter will become the hunted.” It was a mantra Samir had repeated for months.

The man I have been sent to kill will finally die, and I will be rewarded handsomely, Samir thought. Samir had played this out in his mind evening after evening, and the end result was always the assassin lying dead in a pool of his own blood. Four men with submachine guns against a single man with a pistol, and he was in reserve just in case—hundreds of bullets against a handful. This would surely end in his favor.

Samir was just about to enter the room when the clamor came to an abrupt stop. In the silence that followed he heard a sound he couldn’t quite place. Cocking his head to one side in thought, he tried to figure out what was the cause of the strange gurgling noise. At the precise moment he figured it out, he heard his brother grunt in agony. Samir froze where he was. A second later his brother began to stumble back through the doorway without his weapon, his hands clutching his stomach. No more than a foot or two in front of him, Samir saw a bullet hit his brother in the chest, exiting out his back and spraying blood all over the wall across the hall. Horrified, Samir reached out to grab him and the door frame suddenly exploded, sending splinters of wood flying. Samir jerked back, feeling the sting in his cheek.

His right eye began blinking frantically as he watched his brother fall, and then fear seized his every muscle as it occurred to him that the assassin might be coming for him. Without really thinking, Samir moved his submachine gun to his left hand and swung it around the door frame, closed his eyes, and unleashed a volley on full automatic.

Samir stayed in the hallway and fired two more quick bursts into the room. In the quiet that suddenly fell over the scene he looked down at his brother, who was staring up at him with vacant eyes. The guilt hit him like a knife in the chest and his anger took over. Samir swung the black suppressor into the room and held down the trigger. He moved forward, wildly sweeping the weapon back and forth until he was out of bullets.

Stopping in the half light of the hallway, he took in the mess. Three of his men lay dead at his feet, but there was no sign of the assassin. Samir ejected the spent magazine and inserted a new one while his eyes settled on the drapes that blocked the balcony doors. His feet were moving before he’d made a conscious decision. He fired a quick burst through the curtain and then threw the fabric back to the side. The first thing he saw when he stepped onto the balcony was the rope. He followed it to the ground, where he saw a man in black running across the street.

Samir shouldered his weapon and put the gun’s hoop sight over the moving target. He squeezed off a quick three-round burst, but had no way of knowing if he’d hit low, high, right, or left. The assassin changed course and Samir adjusted, this time holding the trigger down and sending a steady stream of bullets after the man. After a few seconds the bolt suddenly slammed into the open position, telling him he was out of rounds. Samir watched the assassin disappear into the shadows and fought back the urge to scream.

He moved back into the room and looked at the carnage. He’d lost three of his men and his own brother was dead in the hallway. He had failed miserably. He began to shake with a mix of fear and white-hot rage. What would he tell their mother? What would he tell the Spaniard and Rafique? Where had he gone wrong? Samir shook his head in disgust but somewhere deep in his brain he knew he was lucky to be alive. He could never say that to the others, though. He could never look so frail in front of them, or they might kill him.

Samir’s mind was shocked back to his current predicament by a sound in the hallway. He needed to get the hell out of there, and quickly, before the police showed up. He slid a fresh magazine into his gun and hit the slide release. At the doorway his eyes were drawn to his brother, but he couldn’t handle the grief. Fighting back the tears, he moved down the hallway toward the stairs. A door on his left opened, revealing a skinny woman in a white bathrobe. Samir raised his weapon and without breaking stride, pumped five rounds into her chest. Two doors later a man stepped into the hallway on his right. Samir squeezed off another burst. He rushed down the stairs, through a short hallway, and into the back alley where he came face to face with a hotel worker. The young man saw the gun and raised his hands. Samir didn’t hesitate. He pulled the trigger back as far as it would go and sent the man sprawling backward into a pile of garbage bags.



CHAPTER 5




RAPP had never been shot, but it wasn’t the type of thing one had to experience to recognize. Bullets had been flying at a rapid pace and one of them had found its mark. The impact had caused him to drop his gun to the street below, but he had held on to the rope. The zip of bullets cracked above his head as Rapp fell over the railing and then dropped. He clamped down with his right hand, the maneuver causing him to spin 180 degrees and come crashing back to the building. He got his feet out in front of him just in time to stop himself from slamming face-first into the stone facade.

Dangling with a bullet wound from a rope and with his gun forty-odd feet below him on the street gave Rapp a sense of vulnerability he did not like. The thought of grabbing his backup gun occurred to him, but his legs were already bending at the knees and kicking him away from the wall. He needed to get away from this place as fast as possible. He loosened his grip on the rope and dropped ten feet before clamping down again. His feet found the wall once more and he used them to push himself away from the building.

When he reached the pavement he looked down to find his gun just a few feet away. He grabbed the weapon and quickly looked left and right. No headlights were visible, but the police would be here shortly. Rapp was already moving across the street and toward the river. He was halfway clear when bullets started snapping in the air around him. He jerked left, crouched a bit, and then broke into a full sprint. The bullets followed him and he jerked right and then his feet found the grass and shadows of the trees. The bullets stopped, but Rapp continued to the right for another fifty feet to make sure he was fully concealed before he committed to his true course.

The bench and walking path were exactly where Rapp expected them to be. He crossed the path and turned left, his feet barely making a noise as they moved lightly along the asphalt. His lungs and legs were working fine, carrying him at quick clip toward a spot he had scouted out a few days earlier. Just before he reached the bridge the first wave of pain hit him. It came rolling in, building in intensity until it hit, throbbed, and then diminished. Rapp resisted the urge to touch his shoulder and assess the damage. He could feel the slick wetness under his shirt and that told him enough. The wound was somewhere in his left shoulder, which meant he should be able to handle it unless it had hit his axillary artery. If that were the case, he would most likely lose consciousness and bleed out in the next few minutes.

Up ahead he sighted the low-slung bridge with its curved stone arches. Rapp suddenly couldn’t remember its name, which made him wonder if his brain wasn’t getting enough blood. He slowed his pace and left the path. The crunch of dirt and gravel under his feet told him he had found the foot-worn trail. He followed it slowly to the south embankment of the river and the base of the bridge. The ledge was no more than three feet wide. Rapp paused and peered down the length of it. There was just enough light from the city bouncing off the water to see that he was alone. He ducked under the curved arch and crouched his way to the middle. He sat down on the ledge, his feet dangling a few feet above the water of the Seine.

Out of habit, Rapp moved to switch his silenced Berretta from his right hand to his left so he could holster it, but his left hand did not respond in the way he would have liked. He managed to move it a few inches and then a stabbing pain told him it was a bad idea. Rapp cursed under his breath and then set the gun down on the ledge next to him. Using his teeth, Rapp tugged off the glove on his right hand, finger by finger, and dropped the glove next to the gun. He opened his jacket and then undid the next two buttons on his shirt. His hand slid over the rough fabric of his bulletproof vest and found his bare shoulder soaked in blood. A wave of pain peaked and he bit down hard. As the surge passed his index finger found what he was looking for—the exit wound. Rapp breathed a sigh of relief. The bullet had gone all the way through and the hole was no bigger than the tip of his finger. If it had been a hollow-tipped round the exit wound would have been much bigger and the damage far worse.

Reaching around his back, he found the entry wound and sensed there was less blood, but it was hard to tell. He unfastened the small pack around his waist and opened the med kit. His fingers found a small pen flashlight. Rapp placed it against his thigh and turned it on. Satisfied that the red filter was affixed, he placed the small flashlight in his teeth and found the first of four syringes. He popped the cap, letting it fall into the river, and then, pressing the plunger, he soaked his shoulder in iodine.

Rapp looked at the next syringe for a second and hesitated. He had gone over this in theory, but now, sitting here bleeding, he began to realize just how much it was going to hurt. Before he did that, though, he had to plug the hole. He tore open a package of gauze and started feeding it into the entry wound on the back of his shoulder. The pain was more manageable than he’d expected, but this would be the easy part. When he was done, he picked up the next syringe and dropped that cap into the river as well. Grabbing his left wrist, Rapp brought it up and hooked the hand’s fingers around his jacket and shirt, exposing the exit wound, and then let the limp arm hang there. Not wanting to think about the next move any longer than he needed to, he placed the tip of the plastic syringe into the exit hole, took a deep breath and then shoved the needle in as far as it would go. It took every ounce of control not to scream. Rapp’s entire body went rigid with pain, his eyes rolled back in his head, and for a good five seconds he feared he might pass out.

The shock of the initial pain began to recede and Rapp took several deep breaths. When he was ready, he placed his thumb on the plunger. Then he pressed down and the first few cc’s of the powdered blood coagulant flowed into the wound. Rapp pulled the syringe out an inch and pumped more of the powder into the wound. He repeated the process two more times until the syringe was empty. After discarding it, he grabbed the next-to-last syringe, popped the cap, and jabbed it into the wound. A muffled curse escaped his lips this time, and he grunted while he hit the plunger, sending super glue into the wound to help stop the bleeding.

Police sirens could now be heard coming from every direction. Rapp tossed the syringe out into the current and leaned back. He had to get moving. He fished out the last syringe. It contained a broad-spectrum antibiotic. He sat up straight and found a patch of skin under his bulletproof vest. He jabbed the needle through the fabric of his dress shirt and didn’t so much as feel a pinch. Not knowing how he would secure the med kit and thinking that he had pretty much done all he could, he dropped the entire thing into the murky river. He stared down at his gun for a second and was about to dump it as well, but decided against it. Where he was going he would have plenty of opportunities to dispose of it. Rapp grabbed the weapon with his good hand, reversed it, and nudged the tip of the suppressor into the holster. As he snapped it into place, he heard voices off to his right. He knew the temperature of the water, the speed of the current, and roughly how long he would last until hypothermia took his life.

As the voices grew louder, Rapp scooted his butt to the edge, gripped the stone with his right hand, and slid himself quietly off the ledge and into the water. He sank beneath the surface smoothly, the suction of his clothes pulling him down. He knew not to panic. As soon as his clothes were soaked, they would be neutral. Rapp bobbed to the surface five seconds later, the current already pushing him to the west. He took in an easy breath and ignored the chill of the dark water, telling himself it would help slow his blood flow. He was going to take a casual swim through the heart of Paris, and in a few hours, he would find the right place to make ground.

Rapp rolled onto his back and gently scissor-kicked his legs under the surface. As he cleared the relative darkness of the bridge he looked up at the night sky and for the briefest of moments wondered how many people had died in this river—if his would be just another body to add to the count. The thought made him smile. Always up for a challenge, Rapp felt his survival mode kick in, and he told himself that he would live through this night as surely as the sun would rise in the east in the morning. And then he would go searching for answers. Something had gone horribly wrong tonight, and Rapp needed to know how the enemy was on to him. No matter what Kennedy and the others ordered, he would not be going back to the states for some time on the couch with Langley’s resident shrink.



CHAPTER 6




COMMANDANT Francine Neville of the French Judicial Police stood amidst the carnage holding a cup of coffee in one hand and desperately wishing she had a cigarette in the other. Her people were picking through the slaughter with gloved hands and various tools. A photographer stood in the doorway clicking away. Neville was momentarily conscious of the fact that she wasn’t wearing any makeup and her hair, which she wore in a swooping bob midway between her ears and shoulders, was probably sticking out in a way that made her look slightly deranged. She’d been to enough crime scenes over the years, though, to know it was a waste of time to worry. If this crime was ever solved, and brought to court, she would have to endure the less-than-flattering photos with the rest of her team, who had all been yanked from their beds before sunrise.

Neville was good at her job. She had risen quickly through the ranks of the National Police, both in spite of the fact that she was a woman and because she was a woman. Political pressures had ushered in the brave new age of women in positions of command and Neville knew there were still plenty of misogynists around who thought the only reason she’d made commandant at the relatively young age of thirty-seven was that the bosses had to reach their quota. She ignored all of the whispers, focused on her job, and took comfort in the fact that the men she worked with knew she was qualified and had earned her position. On nights like this, however, she questioned why she had chosen police work.

Neville’s face was a pinched scowl as she surveyed the chaos. This one would be a real circus. She had a fat naked man in the bed with a skinny woman half his age lying next to him. Both were dead—riddled with bullets. Four more men, paramilitary types by the look of them, were also strewn about the floor. These bodies were relatively intact, with only one or two slugs in them. Down the hall, two more bodies were sprawled out in separate doorways. Neville figured they were hotel guests who had heard the commotion, and when they’d gone to investigate, had been killed by the crazy bastards who had done all of this. Also, an unfortunate young employee of the hotel who did the overnight laundry was now prostrate in the alley with five bullet holes in his chest. Neville tallied the carnage—nine bodies in total. In her sixteen years on the force, the biggest investigation she’d been involved in was a triple homicide. It was of course a love triangle, murder-suicide. While sensational, the case was not hard for the press and public to figure out. Wife cheats on husband, husband kills wife and her boyfriend, and then kills himself. It wasn’t the first such murder, and it wouldn’t be the last.

This was an entirely different scenario. The number of victims pushed her mind in two separate but linked directions. They’d had a real problem with the Slav gangs that had flooded into the slums after Yugoslavia fell apart and spiraled into civil war, and now the Russian gangs with their newfound independence were beginning to assert themselves. As always, she would need to keep her mind open, but those two groups were at the top of her list.

Gnawing at the back of her mind were two other entities—her superiors at the National Police headquarters and the press. Submachine-gun fire at a five-star hotel in the heart of Paris was sensational enough; throw in the nine dead bodies and she was guaranteed a media circus the likes of which the city hadn’t seen since the Dreyfus Affair. Her superiors would find it nearly impossible not to interfere and she already knew how they would do it. A few would try to micromanage her investigation and the bulk would spend their lunches leaking to the press.

Anxiety crept up on Neville as she realized this entire mess could end her career. Her attention turned to the dead man lying on the bed. It was something out of one of those American mobster movies. Feathers and tufts of fabric were everywhere, and a good amount of it was clinging to puddles of blood. She looked to the four paramilitary types on the floor. They could easily be Serbs or Croats. They had that swarthy look. Neville had sent one of her officers down to the front desk to find out whose name the room was registered under. She heard a cackle of grating laughter from the hallway, and a moment later a man appeared in the doorway, stopped, and looked down at one of the dead bodies.

If Neville needed any confirmation that she was in the middle of a shit storm, it was now standing in the doorway. She had hoped to get through the rest of her life without ever seeing Paul Fournier again, and she had made it nearly four years, but tonight her luck had run out. Fournier was DGSE—France’s General Directorate for External Security. It was the organization tasked with the external security of the country—the key word being external. Neville had a sinking feeling that Fournier was here because of the man in the bed. As her gaze shifted between the two men, one dead and the other alive, she knew that this case had just become infinitely more complicated.

“Francine,” Fournier called far too loudly from across the room. “A pleasure to see you. It’s been far too long.”

Neville sighed and said, “Paul, what are you doing here?”

“You know how things work at the Directorate,” he said with a broad grin under a salt-and-pepper mustache. “We go wherever the Republic needs us.”

“I thought you specialized in subverting the unstable governments to our south.”

Fournier laughed heartily and stepped carefully around the dead bodies. When he was a step away from Neville, he held out his arms as if he was ready to embrace an old friend.

Neville shuddered at the thought of touching him. With a frown on her oval face she put out her right hand, signaling him to keep his distance. His audacity had certainly not diminished over the years. “Why are you here?”

Fournier let the wounded look fall from his face and began patting the pockets of his gray trench coat in search of something. A moment later, he fished out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He lit one and then extended the cigarette to Neville.

The gall of this man, she thought to herself. When she had first met Fournier, nine years ago, she had been drawn to his confidence, but in the end, she realized that what looked like confidence was actually the facade of a cold, calculating, manipulative, selfish prick. Straining to keep her cool, she shook her head at the offer and said, “Why is everything so difficult with you?”

“I’m sorry?” he asked, pretending to not understand.

She shrugged. “I ask you a simple question, but you refuse to answer.”

Fournier suddenly looked offended. “Come now, my dear Francine. I know things did not end well between us, and I am sorry for that, but it was what . . . ten years ago? Surely we can be professional about this.”

She ignored the fact that he was off by six years and instead focused on a thousand things she’d like to say to the jerk. All of them would have felt good, would have been accurate, and they would all have been a mistake. Accuracy and truth had no sanctity to Fournier. For him they were devices to be used to advance his agenda and schemes. He would obfuscate and claim the mantle of victim no matter how egregious his sins. Engaging him was exactly what he wanted. “Paul, I am being completely professional about this. That is why I asked you why you are here. This is my crime scene. Directorate of Security or not, I need to know why you are here.”

“Fair enough,” Fournier said in an easy tone. He exhaled a cloud of smoke and turned to the bed. “Do you have any idea who that is?”

Neville was suddenly very angry with the officer she had sent down to the front desk to find the answer to this exact question. She straightened a bit and said, “I do not.”

The answer brought a smile to Fournier’s face. “Well, let’s see.” He wheeled back toward the dead bodies and said, “Four men with suppressed automatic weapons, all dead.” Gesturing to the bed he continued, “An overweight man in his sixties and a skinny young woman less than half his age . . . most likely a prostitute.”

Neville acted bored. The conclusions were obvious. She was tempted to say so, but knew the less she said the better. Fournier had his stage, and he needed to play out this little game in order to diminish her in front of her men. “The man’s name?” she asked in a dispassionate voice.

“I’m getting there,” Fournier said, holding up a cautionary finger. “Six bodies. That’s rather a lot.”

Neville didn’t bother to correct him and tell him about the other three bodies. She would offer as little information as possible in hopes that the spook from Directorate of Security would get what he was looking for and leave.

As Fournier continued to analyze the obvious, his eyes were busy noting the more interesting aspects of the crime scene. There were certain incongruities that Neville and her team would eventually notice, but for now, it was hard to see the proverbial trees through the forest. He placed himself in the room when it all went down. Looked at the shattered glass headboard, the bullet-pocked plaster wall, and the two bodies on the bed, riddled with bullets. Brass shell casings littered the floor. Hundreds of rounds had been fired. That the assassin had escaped was a miracle. Fournier looked at the nearest man on the floor and noted the precise location of the bullet hole in his forehead, and couldn’t help but nod in respect for the man whose aim had stayed so steady under a fusillade of bullets.

“The man’s name?” Neville asked again.

Fournier approached the bed. He looked down at the heavyset man, noted more than a dozen shallow entry wounds, and then his eyes found the near-perfect dot just above the minister’s nose. That would have come from their assassin. Fournier inhaled deeply and waved his cigarette at the bed. “That, my dear, is Tarek al-Magariha.”

Neville waited for him to expand. It was a long moment that grew longer, and when she tired of the wait, she asked, “And who is Tarek al-Magariha?”

“He is Libya’s oil minister, and these men I presume are, or I should say were, his bodyguards.”

Neville closed her eyes for a moment and clenched her fists. Serbian and Russian gangsters killing each other was one thing—it wasn’t good, but to a certain extent the good people of Paris didn’t care as long as they were killing each other. A foreign diplomat, however, was an entirely different mess. A Libyan diplomat was even worse, and their oil minister the worst of all. Neville didn’t know the exact number, but she knew her country received a large portion of its oil imports from the country across the Mediterranean.

“Any idea who killed him?” She found herself asking the question before she could stop herself, and she instantly regretted it, for she knew Fournier was incapable of telling her the truth.

“No idea at the moment, but the usual suspects will be looked at.”

“The usual suspects?”

“The Israelis . . . a few others.” Fournier knew much more than he was letting on, but he wasn’t about to tell someone from the National Police that al-Magariha had spent most of his career working for Libya’s brutal intelligence service, the Mukhabarat el-Jamahiriya.

Neville eyed Fournier with suspicion. All of her instincts told her he was holding back information. “How did you find out so quickly?”

“Quickly?”

“That he’d been murdered.”

Fournier flashed her a proud smile. “I have my sources.”

Neville wondered if the DGSE had had the Libyan under surveillance. She was about to ask the question but thought better of it. He would never give her an honest answer. She would pass her suspicions on to her bosses, and they could lock horns with the higher-ups at DGSE. “I’m still a bit confused as to why you are here.”

“We have a dead foreign diplomat, my dear. I would think you would understand the need for the Directorate to be involved.”

Neville gave him nothing.

Fournier shrugged. “Well, my superiors want me to keep a very close eye on your investigation, so we will be seeing quite a bit of each other.”

Neville’s light brown eyes were fixated on the inch-long piece of ash that was precariously dangling from the end of Fournier’s cigarette. “This is a crime scene. I don’t care how much clout you think you have, if that ash hits the carpet, I will have you handcuffed and removed.”

“Sorry,” Fournier said, wide-eyed, as if he’d suddenly realized his mistake. He held a hand under the ash as he made his way to the balcony door. With light breaking in the morning sky, he could see the bullet holes in the curtain. He shouldered his way through the curtains and out onto the small balcony. Fournier flipped the ash over the edge and followed it down to the sidewalk. The police barricades were up and a few members of the press and curious onlookers were beginning to gather. Word would continue to spread and this place would be a circus by midmorning. He turned his head toward the roof and took note of the fact that his man had retrieved the rope before the police had figured out it was there. Fournier wasn’t sure how much more he could do to help muddy the waters, but he did know he needed to get out of here before too many cameras showed up.

He walked back into the hotel suite and began stepping around bodies. “Francine, I will be in touch. If you need me, you know where to find me.”

Neville turned away from the examination of several shell casings on the near side of the bed. She felt a great sense of relief as she watched him leave the room, but then within a few seconds, asked herself why he was leaving so quickly. Something didn’t feel right, and in that moment, Neville had final confirmation that Paul Fournier was going to be a major complication in an already complicated case.



CHAPTER 7

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

THOMAS Stansfield was accustomed to working Saturdays. The world did not stop for the deputy director of Operations for the CIA to rest so he worked six and a half days a week. He was, however, not accustomed to being rousted by the secretary of state at four in the morning on a Saturday. Even so, he kept his cool as the secretary told him the news of a dead Libyan diplomat in Paris. He also managed to patiently listen as the secretary made some extremely wild and uninformed accusations. Stansfield assured him the CIA had nothing to do with whatever it was that had happened in Paris, and before hanging up, he promised America’s top diplomat that he would have some answers by noon.

By 8:00 a.m., Stansfield was ensconced in the Situation Room at the White House with most of the National Security Council. With the president off playing golf in Maryland and the vice president AWOL, Secretary of State Franklin Wilson led the meeting. After two hours of idle conjecture, and a lot of bluster about putting pressure on Israel, Stansfield finally managed to break away from the meeting.

With the morning already half gone, Stansfield was irritated that he didn’t have a single salient fact. The questions were piling up, and he knew if he was going to get some answers, he would need to escape this meeting of Washington’s power elite and have a much-needed discussion with one of his junior operatives and an old colleague who had better be waiting in his office back at Langley.

Stansfield found Irene Kennedy sitting in his small lobby and signaled for her to follow him into his soundproofed office. In his eternally composed way, Stansfield motioned for Kennedy to sit in one of the chairs opposite his desk and then asked, “Where is Stan?”

Kennedy shrugged. Her shoulder-length hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail. “He wandered off a while ago. Said he needed to talk to someone.”

Stansfield unbuttoned his gray suit coat, took it off, and draped it over the back of his leather office chair. He was annoyed that Stan Hurley was loose in the building, but he didn’t let it show. They had a long, colorful history together and Stansfield was intimately familiar with the man’s abilities as well as his weaknesses. There were some very good reasons why Stansfield had turned him into a private contractor a few years ago. Chief among them was that Hurley was completely tone deaf when it came to the internal politics of Langley. He was like a child who simply couldn’t resist touching the paint when the sign clearly said, “Wet paint. Do not touch.” In the ordered, uptight halls of Langley, he was a disaster waiting to happen.

Stansfield looked at his Timex watch and decided he would give Hurley five minutes before he sent someone looking for him. Turning his thoughts to the matter of most concern, he asked, “Our young friend . . . has he checked in?”

Kennedy knew Stansfield’s office was swept for listening devices on a daily basis, but these conversations always made her nervous. “No.”

“Any idea why?”

“I would prefer not to jump to any conclusions until we know more.”

Stansfield looked at her with his gray eyes, waiting patiently for her to say more. The look on his face was one that was familiar to all who worked for him. He paid his people for their intellect and their opinions, not to play it safe until the answer was obvious. “I know he’s still relatively new . . . but I assume you properly impressed on him the need to check in.”

“I did, and although he may be new compared to some of the other people around here, in one year’s time he’s racked up more real field experience than any other ten operatives combined.”

Reading between the lines, Stansfield understood that by practical field experience, she meant kills. “Has he ever failed to check in before?”

Kennedy considered the question for a moment, but then the door opened and Stan Hurley walked in. He was wearing a boxy-fitting blue suit, white shirt, and no tie. His mustache was trimmed short but he’d skipped the razor this morning, so he had scruffy stubble that looked like it could be used to sand wood. Stansfield, knowing Hurley’s uncouth side better than most, was impressed that he’d actually bothered with the suit at all.

“Sorry I’m late,” Hurley announced with a basso voice that he’d developed from years of smoking, drinking, and yelling.

“What have you been up to?” Stansfield asked with sincere curiosity.

“Just checking in on a few old friends.”

“Do I want to know who?”

Hurley flashed him a lopsided grin and said, “Boss, you’ve got more important things to worry about.”

Stansfield would find out later. For now they had to figure out what had happened in Paris, and to what extent they might be exposed. Keeping his eyes on Hurley, he asked, “Any word on what happened last night?”

“Nine bodies. Libyan oil minister and a prostitute were gunned down along with his four-person security detail.”

The deputy director of Operations gave a slight nod. He’d already confirmed as much.

“There were also three innocent civilians.” Hurley leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He stroked his mustache with both hands and folded them under his chin. The man seemed to be in perpetual motion. Even at fifty-three, he had a youthful energy about him.

“Three innocents?” Stansfield asked, betraying his surprise with only an arched brow. He turned to Kennedy. “Did you know about this?”

“No,” Kennedy answered honestly.

“Two hotel guests,” Hurley added, “just down the hall from Tarek’s room, and then a kitchen boy in the back alley.”

“Nine bodies,” Stansfield repeated, still surprised by the number.

“That’s right,” Hurley said as if it was no big deal.

“Any chance one of these bodies is the man we’re looking for?” Stansfield asked.

“It doesn’t sound like it.”

Kennedy turned in her chair to face Hurley. “Where’d you get this information?”

“Listen here, Missy,” Hurley snarled, “I wasn’t the one who planned this half-assed op.”

“Let’s hear it,” Kennedy said with a confrontational edge in her voice.

“Hear what?”

“How the great Stan Hurley would have done it differently.”

“For starters I would have never sent him in alone.”

“That’s pretty much all we’ve done for the last nine months and he’s been pretty successful . . . a hell of a lot more successful than you and your boys have been the last couple years.”

“You can bitch all you want, but I warned you. You gave that boy way too long a leash.”

Stansfield was not in the mood to referee another argument between these two, so he cleared his throat and asked, “Who’s your source?”

“Don’t worry about my source. He’s impeccable.”

“All the same,” Stansfield said, “I’d like to know.”

Hurley put on an irritated face. He’d known Stansfield for three decades and he knew by the arch of his damn right eyebrow when there was no sense in trying to put him off. “An editor at one of the major dailies over there. She says the press is all over this thing.”

Kennedy noted that he’d originally referred to his source as a he. The man was always thinking of ways to throw you off.

“Is this the she I’m thinking of?” Stansfield asked.

Hurley knew how proper his old friend was, and he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to say openly what he was really asking. “You mean the editor from Le Monde I used to sleep with?”

Stansfield nodded.

“That would be her.”

“And how do we know that she has her facts straight? We can assume they have it right on Tarek and the prostitute. What about the other seven bodies?”

“She already has names on all of them. The police have asked her not to release them until they can notify families, but none of the names I was given popped.”

“So we can assume he’s alive,” Kennedy said, with just a hint of relief in her voice.

“And that he fucked up, big-time!” Hurley said, not giving her an inch.

“We don’t know that,” Kennedy retorted, addressing Stansfield instead of Hurley. She had known both of these men since birth. Her father had worked with them out of this very building. She was perhaps the only person at Langley under the age of thirty who would dare disagree with them. Stansfield admired her for it, while Hurley thought she should keep her mouth shut until she’d served at least a decade.

“What we know,” Hurley said, his voice growing in intensity, “is that innocents are off limits. That is the unbreakable rule.”

“That means a lot coming from you,” Kennedy said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.

“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what it means.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Uncle Stan,” she said in a voice devoid of affection, “you’ve based your entire career on breaking the rules, and I think the reason he pisses you off is that he’s a constant reminder that you are getting old and he’s better than you were at your best.”

Stansfield knew the words hurt his old friend, and he also knew there was a great deal of truth to them. Most of this was beside the point, however. They needed to focus on the problem at hand. “I want both of you to listen to me. We don’t know what happened over there, and as we’ve all learned before, it’s a dangerous thing to rush to conclusions.”

“I’ll tell you what’s dangerous,” Hurley snapped, still smarting from Kennedy’s comments. “Letting a fucking untrained dog off the leash. Letting him basically run himself without any proper handling. That’s what’s dangerous.” Hurley leaned back, shaking his head. “I’ve been warning you two about him from day one.”

Kennedy turned and gave him an icy stare. “I assume you’re referring to the same dog who risked his life to save your ungrateful, stubborn ass in Beirut?”

Stansfield desperately wished these two could work out some truce, but according to Dr. Lewis, there were no signs of things cooling down between them. He listened to them argue back and forth for a half minute and then said, “Are you two done?” He gave them a moment to absorb the fact that he was sick of listening to them and then said, “Does either of you have any useful information that you could give me?”

“I sent some assets over this morning. First flight out. They’ll start poking around and see what they can find out.”

“Good,” Stansfield told Hurley. “I want you to get over there, too, and make sure we keep a tight lid on this thing. Find out what is going on and bring him in.”

“That’s my job, sir,” Kennedy protested. “I’m his handler.”

Stansfield shook his head. “You’re too official, and you don’t have Stan’s contacts. I need you here.”

Kennedy turned to Hurley, her eyes narrowing in distrust. “Who did you send over this morning?”

“A couple of my guys.”

“Who, Stan?”

“Don’t worry,” Hurley said out of the side of his mouth. “I know how to handle my people.”

Kennedy studied him for a moment and asked, “Did you send Victor?”

“What does it matter if I did?”

Kennedy turned her attention back to Stansfield. “If you’ve read my man’s jacket, you know he and Victor have an explosive past.”

“This is getting old.” Hurley shook his head. “I’m sick of being second-guessed.”

Kennedy kept her eyes on Stansfield. “If he gets a whiff of Victor and his thugs things will end badly.”

“You’re overreacting,” Hurley grumbled.

“Ask Tom,” Kennedy said, referring to Dr. Lewis. “He’ll give you an honest assessment.”

Stansfield nodded. “I will, but in the meantime I need you two to find out as much as you can about what happened last night.” He motioned with a flick of his hand that they were done.

Kennedy stood. “I understand that this looks bad, sir, but there’s a lot we don’t know.”

“I’ll grant you that, but what we do know is not good . . . nine bodies, at least four of them innocent bystanders.” The veteran spy shook his head. “This was supposed to be a surgical strike. The target, and as few bodyguards as possible, and that was it. No innocent bystanders. The rules were very clear.”

“I know, sir, but there could be an explanation.”

The problem, as Stansfield understood it, was that an explanation could be next to worthless at this point, but there was no sense in hammering the handler. He’d knowingly gone along with deploying Rapp despite repeated concerns raised by Stan Hurley. “Anything is possible, but we are in the answer business, and I need some answers.”

Hurley stood. “Don’t worry, I’ll bring him in.”

“None of your cowboy bullshit, Stan. I want him back here in one piece.”

Hurley left without saying another word. After a few seconds, Kennedy started for the door.

Stansfield, looking at some papers on his desk, ruminated, “There’s a chance we misjudged him.”

Kennedy stopped abruptly, composed herself, and turned slowly to look back across the sterile office at the man she respected above all others. The disappointment on her face was obvious. “I don’t believe I did, sir. The rest of you may have . . . and still are. He has performed beyond anyone’s wildest expectations, and at the first sign of trouble you all assume he blew it.”

“I haven’t jumped to any conclusions. I simply expect my operatives to check in. Especially when their ops end badly.” Stansfield picked up a file and said, “I’ve warned you before . . . don’t let your feelings cloud your judgment in these matters. Follow Stan’s lead on this and it will all work out.” Stansfield opened the file, signaling that the meeting was over.

Kennedy’s frustration boiled over. “Maybe you should have this same talk with Stan.”

“Excuse me?” he asked, looking over the top of his glasses. Kennedy’s father had been a colleague of Stansfield’s, and more important, a good friend. He had tragically met his death overseas, and because of that, Stansfield had always felt protective of Kennedy. He understood that he had become a father figure to her, and he welcomed that, but at the same time, he was aware that he was sometimes a bit over-protective of her. Maybe that had led him to think her less capable than some of the others.

“You tell me not to allow my feelings to cloud my judgment . . . what about Stan? He’s had it in for Mitch since day one. Mitch even saved his life and the mean old cuss can’t say so much as thank you.”

Stansfield removed his glasses. “I am well aware of Stan’s shortcomings. And trust me when I tell you, he and I have discussed them at length.”

“The problem, sir, is that he sees too much of himself in Mitch and it drives him nuts that he can’t control him.”

Stansfield couldn’t disagree. Dr. Lewis had alluded to this very problem in several of his reports. In a soothing voice he said, “Irene, we prepare for the worst on something like this, and the truth is everything will more than likely turn out fine.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“I know you don’t like the way Stan deals with things, but he does have a very good record of delivering. If he’s alive, Stan will bring him in.”

“I don’t think so,” she said in a distant voice. “If you want to bring him in, I’m the one to do it. If you want more bodies, then send Stan and his goons over there to try to collect him. Mark my words, sir, it won’t end well.”



CHAPTER 8

PARIS, FRANCE

RAPP had floated downriver for nearly two hours. The Seine wound through the heart of Paris like a coiled snake. It was impossible to gauge how far he had traveled, but he guessed it was somewhere around two miles. First light approached at roughly the same time he felt the effects of hypothermia settling in. In a way, the cool water was a blessing. It had helped slow his blood flow and ease whatever internal bleeding he had inside his shoulder. But Rapp did not want to be stuck in the river when the sun came up and he was fearful that he might lose consciousness if he stayed in the water much longer. The river flushed him around a big S turn and he saw an industrial yard with holding tanks for petroleum. This early on a Saturday morning there were likely to be few, if any workers. He decided it was a good place to make ground.

Rapp swam up to the uneven wood pier and found an oil-slick ladder. He clung to it for a second, ignoring the rats that he heard squeaking under the recesses of the pier. His left arm hung limp, although he found that he could at least move his fingers and make a fist. Using his right hand, he got a grip and then found the first rung with his feet. Muscles stiff, he climbed the ladder until he had a clear view of the area. The yard was probably four to five hundred feet wide. Parked near the end of the shallow pier were a forklift, three oil trucks, and a front-end loader. Beyond the vehicles sat an old brick warehouse that ran the length of the yard. The perimeter was marked by a ten-foot fence topped with barbed wire—all of it covered with vines and ivy.

Rapp searched for motion lights and signs of a night watchman, or worse, a dog. He still had the silenced Beretta. He’d debated deep-sixing it every few minutes while he’d been in the river. It was not the kind of thing you wanted to be caught with, but a silenced weapon was also something he’d learned not to toss away carelessly. The thought of a rabid guard dog lurking somewhere nearby made him glad he’d decided to keep the gun. Rapp turned and looked at the other side of the river. There were more warehouses, and as far as he could tell, there wasn’t a light or sound of anyone moving about. Parisians weren’t exactly known for their work ethic, and he doubted anyone would be showing up too early on a weekend, if at all.

Trying to shake the stiffness from his limbs, he climbed onto the pier and began a slow, water-soaked trudge toward the warehouse. He walked upright and with as much purpose as he could muster. He ignored the pulsing pain in his shoulder and focused on his eyes and ears. There was no sense crouching and sneaking around in the open. It would only raise the curiosity of an onlooker who might then call the police.

Rapp made it to the corner of the building and steadied himself. Looking back toward the river, he scanned the opposite shore once more to see if anyone was about. Satisfied, he moved on, acutely aware that if he didn’t find some warmth and food, he might lose consciousness. The air temperature hovered somewhere in the midfifties. Not harsh, but after a few hours in the cold water his strength was being tested. The first few entrances were nothing more than large bay doors for vehicles. Farther down, though, he found a regular door and checked the frame. There were no signs of security wires and the door looked flimsy enough to kick in, but Rapp didn’t want to make that kind of noise, so he pulled out his knife. Wedging the forged blade into the gap of the frame and the door, he found the locking mechanism and worked the knife up and down and then back and forth until he had it in the right spot and then he simply leaned his good shoulder into the door and nudged it open.

Rapp stepped into the building and closed the door. Rather than turn on the lights he pulled out his penlight and inspected the door, checking it for wires. Satisfied that he hadn’t tripped an alarm, he turned his attention to the large warehouse space to his right. The entire place reeked of fuel. He kept the light pointed at the floor, its red glow illuminating the first tier of black oil drums. Twenty feet ahead on his left was another door. Rapp moved toward it and found it was unlocked. He entered a hallway and closed the door behind him. There were five doors on the left and only two on the right. The first door he checked was locked, as well as the second, but the first door on the right was unlocked. Rapp nudged it open and found a row of lockers as well as a bathroom and two shower stalls. The thought of a warm shower brought a smile to his face, and he was moving toward them before he stopped himself. Before he could do that, he had to check the rest of the building.

He left the locker room, checking the remaining doors on the left. All were locked, but the last door on the right had no door at all—it was a break room. Rapp scanned the lobby first and then went right back to the dirty break room. He yanked open the refrigerator and found a mess of mold and old food. The thing hadn’t been cleaned out in years. He closed the door in disgust and turned to the vending machine. He was about to break the glass when he caught himself—better to leave as few signs as possible that he’d been here. He fished out some wet bills and fed them into the machine. After purchasing several candy bars, he headed back to the locker room and closed and locked the door. Then he walked straight into the shower stall, clothes and all, and let the warm water begin to clean the dirty river from him and restore warmth to his body. He ate the candy bars, and when he was done he began peeling his clothes off one item at a time.

His first look at his shoulder was underwhelming. The exit wound was no bigger than a quarter—the clear glue that he’d pumped into the wound had taken on a rose tinge from his blood. It had formed a hard shell that looked like stretched and burned skin. A bruise was forming around the wound. Considering how bad it could have been, Rapp felt very lucky. If the bullet had hit an artery, he would have been dead long ago. There was likely some internal bleeding but it was probably stemmed by the junk he’d shot into the wound. He was dealing with a soft-tissue wound that, while it wasn’t life-threatening, hurt like hell. Pain was something, however, that he had learned to deal with a long time ago.

Rapp continued to wash the smell of the river from his skin and hair, letting the warm water bring his muscles back to life. He rinsed his clothes again, wrung them dry, and laid them out on the bench. He was buck-naked other than his dive watch and the backup pistol strapped to his left ankle. The slow float downriver had given him ample time to ponder just what the hell had gone wrong. He still couldn’t figure it out. How did the advance team miss a five-man detail? How did he miss them? Rapp had watched Tarek come and go for two days and not once had he seen a single bodyguard accompany him, let alone five heavily armed men. Rapp had played it by the book and then some. He followed him loose, he followed him close, he watched him from afar and waited patiently to see if there were any trailers or foreign assets connected to the Libyan. There were none. Rapp hadn’t seen a single clue, but even so there had been that unshakable feeling that something wasn’t right. Slowly, the thought began to occur to him that someone had laid a trap for him, and he had walked right into it. That he’d managed to get out of that room alive with all of those bullets flying sent a shudder down his spine. He was lucky to only have been struck by a single bullet.

Rapp stood under the water for a few more minutes and then felt the urge to move. He needed to find someplace secure where he could rest and try to sort this whole thing out. There was the safe house in the Montparnasse neighborhood and the protocols he was supposed to follow, but all that had changed. How well did he really know his handler and the other people on the team? How many different people did they report to, and could they all be trusted? Until he had some answers his survival instincts told him to do what he was trained to do—operate on his own and under everyone’s radar, including the CIA’s.

Rapp stepped from the shower and started checking lockers. They were all locked. Rapp retrieved his silenced Beretta and shot the first combination lock through the guts. The lock spilled open and he set it on the bench with his clothes. He was rewarded with a dirty rag and not much else. He shot off two more locks and found a decent towel. Rapp dried off and then set about scrounging for some dry clothes. When he was done raiding the lockers he had a pair of gray coveralls, a pair of work boots, a worn blue canvas jacket, and a black wool hat.

He secured all of his weapons and equipment in his new clothes and then went back to the break room. After some more foraging, he found a paper bag for his wet clothes and a prepackaged serving of ramen noodles. Rapp added water, tossed it in the microwave for ninety seconds, and then devoured the noodles. After putting his clothes in the bag along with the shot-out locks, he started for the front of the building, feeling much better than when he’d arrived.

When he looked out at the yard, he was relieved to see that he didn’t need to deal with a guard—just a chain-link fence and barbed wire. In the gray morning light, Rapp spotted the separate gate for employees. He checked the door for security wires and then left the building, closing the door behind him. He walked casually across the yard to the gate and drew his silenced Beretta one more time. Two shots disabled the lock. He stuffed it in the oversized pocket of his jacket, opened and then closed the gate. Rapp crossed the street to the sidewalk and headed away from the rising sun. His mind turned to the operation, and he once again began asking himself how well he knew the people he worked for. The answer was that he didn’t and that even at his relatively young age of twenty-five he could spot dysfunction, and there was some major dysfunction in his group. He decided the safe house was out of the question.

Three blocks later, he found himself crossing the river, his mood dark and cautious. Halfway across the bridge he began casually tossing the shot-out locks over the side and into the river. He didn’t want to throw away the Beretta, but he knew he had to. He still had his backup pistol, and the silencer would fit it as well, but he would lose the capacity of the Beretta 92F. With his gloves on, he drew the weapon from his holster, unscrewed the silencer, and stuffed it in the oversized jacket pocket. Using his nearly worthless left hand he ejected the magazine, tossed it over the side, and then began stripping the gun, dumping pieces as he went. By the time he reached the other bank, he was focused on Irene Kennedy—his handler. She was by necessity the person who knew the most about him, and the details of this mission. His orders came from her. If anyone were in a position to set him up it would be her.

Rapp thought of his protocols. Missing a check-in was a cardinal sin. They would all flip back in D.C. if he didn’t call and do so quickly. Add to that the less than surgical carnage back at the hotel and there would be some very upset people. He could practically hear Stan Hurley cussing at the top of his lungs. Rapp suddenly realized how this would go down. Hurley would blame him for screwing this up. He’d blame him for missing the security detail, and there would be hell to pay. The decision for the moment was easy. Being shot was all the excuse Rapp needed to explain why he didn’t check in, at least in terms of D.C., but there was someone else he needed to alert. Rapp did not want to disappoint her, and if he didn’t call her, he’d do more than that. She worried about him under normal circumstances, and this was far from normal. She knew something was in the works and needed to be out of France for a while. That was why they were supposed to meet in Brussels at one this afternoon. Their rendezvous was set in stone. If he didn’t show up, she might do something stupid like call Stan Hurley.

No one knew they were seeing each other, and if she called Hurley, the man would go berserk. Midstride, a shot of pain seized Rapp’s shoulder and ripped down his arm. He stopped walking, stopped breathing, and with his right arm he grabbed a light post to steady himself. Despite the chill, beads of sweat coated his forehead. A wave of nausea hit him and for a second he thought he might throw up. Ten seconds passed and then twenty and thirty, and finally the pain started to pull back like the tide going out. It left his fingers first and then slowly worked its way up his arm. Rapp took a couple of deep breaths and then started to walk again. He needed to find a pharmacy and then a hotel. He had a few in mind, the kind of places where he would blend in with tourists. And he would have to call Greta. Trying to clean the wound on his own would not be easy. She was far from squeamish about what he did. In fact, it turned her on, and the alternative had too many unknowns. If he didn’t show, she might cause some serious problems. He would have to find a pay phone and call her. If he was lucky, he might even catch her before she left Geneva. He also missed her, which was something he didn’t want to admit to himself. It had only been three weeks since they’d last seen each other, and he’d found himself counting the days until they reunited in Belgium like some love-struck high-schooler.

Rapp laughed to himself as he moved down the empty street. He was walking a very thin line. The list of things he’d kept from his handlers was growing rather lengthy, and he knew they would take it as evidence that he couldn’t be trusted. He knew more than they thought, however. He wasn’t the only one breaking the rules.



CHAPTER 9

WASHINGTON, D.C.

SECRETARY of State Franklin Wilson was wearing a white oxford shirt under a yellow cardigan sweater. At seventy-one, with thinning gray hair, he looked every part the wise elder statesmen. A successful attorney, he’d served in three White Houses; the first as a chief of staff, then as the secretary of defense, and now as secretary of state. The money came from his wife’s family—a lucrative auto parts business in Ohio. The reputation was all his. He’d graduated near the top of his class from Harvard Law and joined one of D.C.’s top law firms. In between his stints as a public servant, he would return to the law firm, of which he was now a fully vested partner. It had been a great run. He was one of the titans of the District—a man who was respected by both parties and the press.

Despite all of his accomplishments, he was in a sour mood. The house felt lonely on this fall Saturday afternoon. Wilson had instructed his staff to take a few hours off so he could make this meeting as private as possible. The real reason it felt lonely, though, was that his wife of forty-seven years was gone—not physically but mentally. She’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s just two years ago, and although they’d all held out hope that the disease would advance slowly, it had instead ravaged her mind at a swift pace. Within a year, she’d forgotten her kids and grandchildren and could barely remember her husband. Six months after that she was dead to the world. One month earlier, Franklin Wilson did what he swore he would never do.

At the urging of friends, his staff, and his children, he checked his wife into a home where she could receive twenty-four-hour care. That was the justification, at any rate, but Wilson couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d abandoned her. It haunted him every day. This beautiful Georgetown brownstone where they’d hosted so many parties, with the who’s who of D.C., had now become a mausoleum for him. He refused to sell, feeling it would be another betrayal to her and the memory of the great lady she had been before that insidious disease had begun to eat away at the very thing that made her her. Wilson knew he’d lost some focus, but the demands of his job kept him busy and provided a welcome distraction from the tragic hand he’d been dealt.

When the doorbell sounded, he felt his mood lift. There was important business that needed to be conducted. Wilson bounded from behind his desk, proceeded across the marble foyer, and opened the door to his five-story Georgetown brownstone. He enthusiastically greeted his guest. “Paul, thank you for coming by on such short notice.”

Paul Cooke, the CIA’s deputy director, returned the smile and shook the secretary’s hand. “My pleasure, Mr. Secretary. I always like an excuse to spend some time in Georgetown on a fall afternoon.”

“I know what you mean, and call me Franklin when we’re not in our official capacities,” Wilson said as he closed the door and led his visitor down the hall, “That’s why I bought the place, by the way. No suburbs for me. Too quiet.” Wilson opened a door and pointed down the steps. “Do you like to play billiards?”

Cooke hiked his shoulders. “What Harvard man doesn’t?”

Wilson slapped him on the back. “Good man. You’re class of sixty-five, right?”

“Yes.”

Once they were downstairs, Wilson turned on the stereo and flipped a few switches behind the bar. A hearty fire was already burning and a college football game was on the TV. Wilson didn’t bother asking his guest what he wanted to drink. He grabbed two lowballs and placed three ice cubes in each glass before filling them halfway with single-malt scotch. He gave Cooke his glass and said, “I hope you don’t mind hanging out down here, but I had certain devices installed in this room that make it easier for us to discuss things of a delicate nature.”

Working at the CIA, Cooke understood all too well. He wondered who Wilson had used and when the equipment had been installed. Listening devices and countermeasures were constantly changing.

Wilson held up his glass. “To Harvard. The finest institution in the land.”

Cooke smiled. “To Harvard.”

Wilson made small talk while he racked the balls and continued to keep the conversation light all the way through the first game. After trouncing Cooke, Wilson smashed the second break and moved the conversation in a more serious direction. “Paul, may I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“This is serious, Paul . . . from one Harvard man to another.” Wilson looked at the other man from across the table for a moment, allowing the words to sink in. The innuendo was simple. We are both gentlemen. We do not lie to each other.

Cooke inclined his head respectfully, signaling that he understood.

“Do you trust Thomas Stansfield?”

Cooke was in the process of sipping his scotch, which was a good thing because it helped conceal the grin on his face. He quickly put his business expression on and said, “That’s an interesting question.”

Wilson knew he’d have to lead this one by the nose so he said, “Listen, I’ve known Thomas for close to thirty years. During the Cold War there was no one better, but the Cold War is over, and I’m afraid he’s failing to keep pace.”

Cooke had known there was some reason the secretary wanted to see him, but he had not expected it to be about Thomas Stansfield. He gave a noncommittal nod.

“Do you trust him?” Wilson asked again.

Cooke allowed himself to laugh openly. “If you knew him as you say you do, you wouldn’t bother asking that question. Thomas Stansfield was born to be a spy and is the most secretive man I have ever met in my life.”

Wilson pointed his glass at Cooke and extended his forefinger. “My point exactly.”

Treading carefully, Cooke added, “It does kind of go along with the job description.”

“To a degree, but he is not a king unto himself. He still has to answer to certain people.” Wilson searched the younger man’s face for a sign that he could be an ally. So far he was getting nothing. “He’s never been very good at handling oversight, and I’m afraid with the director slot open he’s gotten even worse.”

The previous director had unexpectedly retired for health reasons one month earlier and the president had yet to nominate a replacement, so for the meantime, Cooke was minding the store. “He does tend to run his own turf, and doesn’t take too kindly to anyone sticking his nose in his business.”

Now we’re getting somewhere, Wilson thought to himself. He refilled their drinks and kept the conversation moving in the direction he thought best for his objectives. He would touch on Stansfield and then move on to D.C. gossip or some funny story about him and the president pulling a practical joke on the hapless vice president. But he kept coming back to Stansfield. It was in the middle of the fifth game of pool and third drink that Wilson saw his opening. “Paul, I need to confide in you.”

Cooke leaned against his pool cue, understanding that they were finally going to get to the heart of the matter. “All right.”

“You’re on the president’s short list for director.”

This came as a surprise to Cooke. His intel had told him that the president was set on bringing in someone who hadn’t been tainted by the Agency. “Really?”

“Yes . . . and would you care to know how you ended up on that list?”

Cooke nodded.

“I put you there. I told the president you are a man who we can trust to get the job done.”

“Thank you, sir.” Cooke’s guard was up. He barely knew Wilson. If the man was recommending him to the president for the top spot at Langley, he must want something in return.

“Do you know who else is on that short list?”

“I’ve heard a few names,” Cooke said honestly. The rumor mill in D.C. was churning out a couple of new possibilities every week.

“Thomas Stansfield is on that list,” Wilson said, shaking his head. “There’s a group of very influential senators who are pushing for him. And I mean pushing hard.”

Cooke nodded. Stansfield was connected, and on top of that, he knew where all the bodies were buried. Cooke would never admit it, but he’d always considered the deputy director of Operations a potential adversary and someone not to be taken lightly.

“The last thing we need is a Cold War cowboy running Langley,” Wilson said with real vigor. “That’s why I’m pushing you. You know the place, you’ve come up through the ranks, and you already have the respect of the front-line troops. All I need to know is, can you handle Stansfield?”

Cooke definitely knew the place. He’d worked there for almost thirty years. He’d come up on the administration side of things and knew how to run a tight ship. As for the respect of the front-line troops, that was a bit of a stretch, but he definitely had the respect of the majority of the employees working out of the Langley campus. As far as handling Thomas Stansfield, that was a tricky question. He wasn’t sure anyone could actually handle the man. His contacts ran deep, and his ability to see three moves ahead of his enemies had always made him a formidable foe. The Russians actually respected him, which spoke volumes. Stansfield saw angles and opportunity where others saw chaos, danger, and a problem not worth tackling. But Cooke had a few surprises of his own.

He took a gulp of scotch and decided to go all in. “I can handle Thomas. It won’t be easy, but I can do it.”

“Handling and reining him in are two different things. I need you to get the man under control. I need you to promise me you’ll get him playing by the rules. I’ve been warning the president for some time that Stansfield is a ticking bomb. Sooner or later, one of his little operations is going to blow up in our faces and he’s going to embarrass the crap out of the president. We’ll end up with committee hearings that’ll drag on for years. It’s hard enough getting elected president, but it’s tough as all hell to get reelected and even more so when you’re being dogged by a scandal.”

Cooke nodded. He’d seen it happen before. “I understand.”

“So we can count on you?”

Cooke wasn’t sure, but he’d figure something out. “You can count on me.”

“Good.” Wilson raised his glass and tapped it against Cooke’s. “I’ll tell the president you’re our man.”

Cooke took a sip and thought to himself, Just like that, I’m the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It had been a lifelong dream.

“There’s something we want you to look into first,” Wilson said.

The glass hadn’t left his lips yet and Cooke thought, Here comes the catch.

“This crap that went down in Paris last night.”

“Yes,” Cooke said, hiding his surprise at the new direction of the conversation.

“The president is pissed. He spoke directly to the Israeli prime minister this morning and they are denying any involvement.”

“They always do. That’s how it works.”

“Yeah . . . well, this time it’s different. There are certain things I’m not at liberty to discuss, but believe me when I tell you the president believes Mossad didn’t have a hand in it.”

Cooke’s face showed no emotion.

“I wish I could say more, but I can’t. You’re just going to have to trust me on this. Can you do that?”

Cooke wasn’t sure, but he wanted to see where this was headed. “I trust you, Franklin.”

“Good.” Wilson took his cue and leaned it against the wall. “Here’s where things are going to get a little dicey.” Not quite sure how to take the next step, he decided to simply spit it out. “I think Thomas Stansfield is involved.”

“Do you have any proof?”

“Nothing concrete. Just some things I’ve picked up. The point is he’s been running afoul of congressional oversight for years, and now I think he’s really stepped in it.”

“Thomas Stansfield is not to be taken lightly. If you want me to get him under control you’re going to have to give me more.”

“I will, but I need you to do something first,” Wilson said, sidestepping the request. “You remember a foul son of a bitch named Stan Hurley?”

Cooke certainly did, but he played it cool. “I know of him.”

“I thought you would. The bastard supposedly retired, but guys like Hurley don’t retire, they keep screwing with stuff in the shadows until the day they die.”

Offering no reaction one way or the other, Cooke simply said, “We have a lot of retired operatives. Not all of them remain as active as Mr. Hurley.”

“So you’re familiar with what he’s been up to?”

“I hear rumors, but they’re just rumors.”

“Well,” Wilson said, nodding his head vigorously, “you can believe at least half of them. The man is a certified paranoid schizophrenic and a sadist.”

“He was very effective back in the day. At least that’s what they say.”

“The operative phrase being ‘back in the day.’ It’s a new world now. No more of this Check Point Charlie, Berlin espionage where we need our own ruthless son of a bitch to go up against the Russians’ ruthless son of a bitch. The world is changing, Paul. Satellites and information are tearing down walls. What we need is intelligence and diplomacy. Hearts and minds are the keys. The president wants someone he can trust at Langley. Someone who is not only going to get Stansfield under control but will make sure goons like Stan Hurley are really retired. Can you do that for us?”

Cooke relished the challenge. Mustering up every bit of confidence he had and then some, he said, “I’m your man.”

“Good.” Wilson slapped him on the back. “Get to the bottom of what in the hell happened in Paris last night, and keep a lid on it. Report only to me. We don’t want the CIA airing its dirty laundry and embarrassing the president.”

“No FBI?” Cooked asked, feigning surprise.

“If we can avoid getting them involved, great. If we have to bring them in, the president will make that call.” Wilson wasn’t about to tell him he was making this up as he went. Part of his job was to insulate the president from scandal, and that’s what he was doing. “Focus on Stansfield and Hurley. Find out what they’ve been up to. Bring it to me, and we’ll have them dealt with. And then you will enjoy one of the quickest confirmations this town has ever seen.”

A broad smile spread across Cooke’s face. It wasn’t born simply of confidence, or of the thought of occupying the corner office on the seventh floor of the Old Headquarters Building. Cooke had been building a nice thick file on Stansfield and his old friend Stan Hurley.



CHAPTER 10

PARIS, FRANCE

PAUL Fournier looked up at the massive Sacré-Coeur Basilica shining on the hill—a stunning blend of Roman and Byzantine architecture. The church was a thing of genuine beauty that was almost certainly unappreciated by the men he was about to meet. Fournier took a deep drag from his cigarette before flicking it to the curb. Even at this late hour tourists were climbing all over the basilica grounds like ants. Two of Fournier’s men were with him. One had already gone ahead to make sure no one was lurking in the shadows and the other was following twenty steps back.

It had been a long day and Fournier wanted some answers, although he thought he had a fairly good idea of what had gone wrong. He walked around the front of the church and continued down a sidewalk, the crowd of tourists thinning as he went. His man flashed him the clear signal and Fournier moved up a short flight of steps, under a stone arch, and tapped on a door three times. A moment passed before the heavy door opened, revealing an old priest with hunched shoulders and cloudy eyes. He gave the intelligence agent a knowing smile but did not speak. With a gnarled hand, he waved for the visitor to enter and then closed and locked the door behind them.

“Thank you, Monsignor,” Fournier said in a tender voice. “How have you been?”

The priest answered in a weathered voice. “Life has been good to me, young Paul, but I’m afraid my days here on earth are drawing to an end.”

Fournier had been hearing this same line for five years. He did not know the exact age of de Fleury, but he looked to be at least ninety. The monsignor was a legend in the intelligence community. When the Nazis occupied Paris in 1940, de Fleury was a priest at the famous Dome Church in the Invalides Quarter near the Eiffel Tower. The church was the focal point of a grand gesture by Louis XIV, founded in 1670 to honor his wounded and homeless veterans, and of course the Sun King himself. In the subsequent years, the area around the church and veterans’ home became an administrative hub for the French military, and most famously in 1840 the final resting place of Emperor Napoleon. Hitler himself came to visit the church and pay homage to the tomb of the man and military tactician he so greatly admired. German troops were billeted in the surrounding buildings during the occupation. Many of them were Catholic, and de Fleury was fortunate to be fluent in German. These German soldiers lined up at his confessional weekly, divulging bits of information, but that was only the start. De Fleury insinuated himself into the company of the high-ranking German officers who were in charge of the occupation. He passed himself off as a Jew-hating Catholic who owed his allegiance to God and the pope. God had not spoken to him, but the pope had made it clear that the Church was neutral in this war. De Fleury passed along crucial information to the French Resistance, and after the war was over, he was privately awarded the Legion of Honor by General Charles de Gaulle.

Fournier had been introduced to him by his old boss years before. The introduction came with the assurance that Father de Fleury could be trusted in all matters involving the security of the Republic.

Fournier placed a gentle hand on the priest’s shoulder and said, “But what a great life it has been.”

De Fleury gave him a sideways glance. The hint of a grin spread across his lips, and he thought to himself, If only this young one knew. “Your guests are here.”

“They are early,” Fournier responded, not able to hide the surprise in his voice. He himself was thirty minutes early.

“And very nervous.” De Fleury kept his eyes on the well-worn stone floor. Shuffling his feet as he moved through the shadows, he added, “And not the most well-mannered men, by the way.”

Fournier allowed himself to show some anger. The old man was too blind to see it, and if he did, Fournier didn’t see the harm. De Fleury was not long for this world, and his contacts back at the Directorate were all dead. He sighed to release some of the tension that was building in anticipation of the meeting. Dealing with these idiots was testing his resolve. “I’m sorry for their behavior. I will have a word with them.”

The old priest stopped at the top of a flight of stairs. He looked down into the dim light of the crypt below. “You will have to excuse me, but my legs will no longer carry me down these stairs, and I will be taking up permanent residence there soon enough.”

Fournier laughed lightly at the old man’s humor. “I understand, Monsignor.” Fournier pressed an envelope into the man’s hand. “Your service to the Republic is admired by many.”

“We all do our part.” De Fleury took the money and slid it into a fold in his vestments. He would count it later when he was alone in his room in the rectory.

Fournier started down the steps. The air grew thick and stale with a mixture of incense and decomposed bodies. When he reached the lower level he looked down the length of the crypt with its vaulted ceiling and alcoves that sprouted to the sides every twenty feet. Fournier moved briskly across the floor, ignoring the various famous people interred in the basement of this celebrated basilica. At the end of the hall, he stepped into a small private chapel and felt the presence of the men off to his left. Fournier put on his mask of calm and approached them. From five paces away, he saw the bandage on Samir Fadi’s face.

“Why are you making us meet in such a place?”

“What is the problem now, Samir?” Fournier had known this degenerate for less than a month and he was already tired of this man’s caustic attitude.

“This is a fucking Catholic church,” Samir snapped. “A shrine built to honor the crusaders who killed my ancestors.”

“Actually,” the voice came from the far side of the chapel, “this beautiful church is a tribute to France’s victory in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. You should read your history, Samir. The Koran makes you a very narrow-minded person.”

Fournier breathed a sigh of relief. It was Max Vega, or at least that was one of his names. Fournier knew of two others. Unlike the two men he was facing, Max was a man of intellect and civility.

“I don’t care when it was built,” Samir snarled. “It is an offense to my faith.”

“The important thing,” Max said in an easy voice, “is that this is a safe place for us to meet.”

“It is a convenient place for him to meet,” Samir said, pointing a finger at the Frenchman. “It reeks of death.”

Max wandered over at a casual pace. “Samir, you need to show some respect to our friend, and lest you forget, Christianity predates our faith by some six hundred years.” Samir started to complain, but Max shushed him with a wag of his finger. “I have never heard Paul complain when you have asked him to meet you in one of our houses of worship.”

“That is different. We don’t fill our mosques with dead bodies.” Samir spat on the ground.

Fournier was a casual Catholic, but even he couldn’t stomach this kind of disrespect. Turning to Max, he said, “I give him protection, and this is how he shows his gratitude.”

“He is right,” Max announced in a disappointed voice. “Is it possible, Samir, that you are mad at yourself for your own failures?”

The comment stung. “What is that supposed to mean?” Samir asked, his eyes wild with anger.

“I would say it’s pretty obvious,” Fournier said, folding his arms across his chest and letting his weight settle on one leg.

“You were not there last night, so I would be careful what conclusions you draw.”

“Conclusions? What conclusion should I draw from nine murders in the heart of Paris? You came here to kill one man, you failed, and now I have nine bodies to deal with.”

Samir stepped forward to within striking distance. “I will only say it one more time. You weren’t there, so I think you should be careful what tone you use with me.”

Fournier laughed. “I’ll use whatever tone I like, you little turd. You are here because of my generosity. I handed you this assassin on a silver platter and you fucked it up so badly I’ve spent the entire day trying to clean up your mess.”

“My mess!” Samir yelled. “I think you set me up! I think you are playing both sides in this. Profiting from them and us with the same information.”

“Lower your voice, you idiot,” Fournier hissed.

“Why . . . are you afraid the dead people will hear me?”

“No . . . I’m afraid one of the priests will come down here to investigate why they have a screaming terrorist in the basement of their blessed church.”

Before Samir could respond, Max stepped forward and motioned for his man to back off. In a sensible voice he ordered, “Samir, tell our friend what went wrong last night.”

“I will tell you what went wrong last night.” Samir nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “We were set up. The assassin was waiting for us. When we came into the room, he was concealed, and he shot my men before they had a chance to fire their weapons.”

Fournier shook his head, not buying a word of it. “You are a liar, Samir.”

“How dare you!” Samir snarled.

“I was there, this morning. There were bullet holes everywhere. Shell casings littered the floor, and I saw at least three empty magazines lying next to your men. Your men were not ambushed . . . they were outmatched.”

“We were ambushed,” Samir said, his eyes wild with rage. “Look at my face. I barely escaped. I have wood splinters in my cheek. I was almost blinded.”

“Yes . . . well, you are doing much better than your men, so consider yourself lucky.”

The third man finally spoke up. Rafique Aziz looked at Fournier and asked, “How did he know we were coming?”

This one made Fournier nervous. Samir was a zealot, and he was blinded by his own rage, but Aziz was more complex. He had the anger as well, but was more calculating. Fournier had been around killers before, and Aziz had that same look in his eyes. “Who says he knew you were coming?”

“Samir.”

“Samir,” Fournier said, scoffing at the idea.

“Yes. I believe my brother.”

Fournier took a step back and looked to Max. “I know one thing. Samir here was given a golden opportunity last night and he blew it. And then after he blew it, he managed to kill three innocent civilians on his way out of the hotel, and now he wants to blame this on me.” Then, looking back at Samir, he said, “I’m not the one who should be explaining myself. In fact, you are lucky I don’t have you thrown into the Mediterranean and drowned.”

Samir drew his gun and pointed it directly at Fournier’s face. “How dare you!”

Aziz drew a knife from his waist. “Maybe we should slit your throat and rid ourselves of a traitor.”

“Put your toys away, gentlemen,” Max ordered.

Samir did as he was told but Aziz kept his knife out, proving he was less willing to comply. Locking a menacing stare onto Fournier, he said, “Maybe we should start hijacking your planes again and blowing up trains. Maybe our Muslim brothers in Libya will start to divert some of their oil to an ally who appreciates our friendship.”

“And maybe I should find this assassin on my own and hand over all of my information on your organization. Give him all the pretty pictures we have of you and your various identities. I’m sure he would be grateful, and based on what happened last night, he would probably move you to the top of his list.”

“And maybe we should alert your superiors to your double dealings,” Samir shot back.

“Samir, you are not very bright. My superiors know all about this relationship.”

“Do they know about the money we have paid you?” Aziz asked.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Fournier said with a sly grin.

Max cleared his throat. “Enough of this nonsense. What is done is done. Last night was a failure. Now we must decide on our next move.”

“Next move?” Fournier asked.

“How do we find this man?”

“We don’t do a thing. You two are going to leave France,” Fournier said, pointing to Aziz and Samir, “and do so as quickly as possible. You will have to find some other way to trap him.”

“Why must they leave?” Max asked.

“Because we have nine dead bodies . . . one of whom happens to be an important diplomat. Every law enforcement and intelligence asset we have will be thrown at this thing, and the press is going to cover every detail.”

“But,” Max said, “the news reports are saying that it was all the act of a single assassin.”

“You can thank me for that, but unfortunately that story isn’t going to hold up.”

“Why?”

“Because the crime scene investigator is very good at what she does, and sometime in the next forty-eight hours she is going to get the ballistics back on the victims and things aren’t going to match. She already noticed some inconsistencies.”

“Such as?” Max asked.

“Your four men who were killed were hit with one or two well-placed shots. Tarek, the prostitute, the guests, and the employee were sprayed with a burst of bullets to the chest and then finished off with multiple shots to the head.” Fournier shrugged. “I removed certain things from the crime scene to slow them down, but trust me, it will only be a matter of time before the lead investigator figures out that two men walked away from that gunfight.”

“How?” Samir asked incredulously.

“Because the assassin is a professional, unlike you. He hit his targets with very few shots while you and your men hit everything except what you were trying to hit. She’s going to find a hollow-point slug in Tarek’s head that is going to match the slugs that killed your men. She’s going to pull a bevy of slugs from the walls that will match the type of ammunition that killed the other two guests and the worker in the alley, and then she’s going to find the surveillance equipment we installed and she’s going to start sniffing around in places where I don’t want her sniffing around.”

“Who cares?” Samir said dismissively. “We will kill her.”

Fournier was done pleading his case to this idiot. He turned to face Max and said, “If he even suggests this again, I will have him killed.”

“I understand.” Turning to Samir, Max said, “Do not open your mouth again, or I will kill you myself.”

“Last night was a bloody mess,” Fournier said. “Libya is raising holy hell, OPEC is furious, and everyone in the French government is enraged that another government might be behind such a bloodbath. A lot of people are suddenly very interested in finding out the identity of this assassin, and who is behind him.”

“So, they will do our work for us.”

“That is my hope. This man has proven extremely elusive, but up to this moment, very few people even knew he existed.”

“Now everyone will be looking for him.”

“Exactly.”

“What about this investigator? Are you afraid she will stumble onto what we were up to?”

Fournier had spent much of the day worrying about this, but he wasn’t about to tell these fools after they’d suggested she be killed. “I will make sure her focus is on foreign intelligence agencies. For now we need the press to continue to report that it was a single assassin.”

“Why?” Aziz asked.

Max finally saw where Fournier was headed. “The assassin has become a liability.”

“Correct . . . Up until now the man has been a ghost. Killing only his targets and a few bodyguards. Last night was a mess. Whoever is behind him is not going to be happy that this one was so sloppy.”

“You think they will dispose of him?” Max asked.

“We’ll see.” Fournier thought of what he would do under the same circumstances. If one of his men had created such disarray, he would most certainly have that option on the table. He needed more information. Two avenues had crowded Fournier’s thoughts. “For now, we need to sit back and see who pops up.”

“Pops up?” Max asked, not understanding.

“Events like this have a way of attracting intelligence assets. The Brits have already called, Libya no doubt has a few men on their way over, and Israel and the Americans have already offered help. It will be interesting to see who shows up over the next few days. We have stepped up surveillance at the airports and the embassies. We will see who comes sniffing around, and with a little luck, they might point us in the right direction.”

Max considered this for a moment and then nodded. “That makes sense.”

As far as Fournier was concerned, it was their only option. He could not afford to draw any more attention to himself. Fournier had been pulled into this because of his relationship with Max. They had offered him a six-figure retainer and hinted in a not-so-subtle way that his help would go a long way toward ensuring their arrangement that Hezbollah and her sister organizations would stay out of France. Seven weeks ago it had seemed a very straightforward deal. Now it was an absolute mess. Fournier should have asked more questions.

“If you want to catch this man,” Fournier said, “it would help to know how Tarek fits in with the other men who were killed by this assassin. Are they linked in some way? Did Tarek do anything while he was working for the Mukhabarat that would cause a country to hunt him down?”

He most certainly had, but Max would have to carefully consider if he would share this information. “I will ask.”

Fournier could tell he was holding back. “Max, our relationship has been one of mutual trust. You are going to have to open up if you want my help, and if that means telling me Tarek double-crossed the Russians or stole money from them or some other country, you need to tell me now.”

“This has nothing to do with the Russians.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then who? You must have some idea.”

Max did not bother to look at the other two men. “We have some ideas.”

“Then please share them, because if you don’t, you will never catch this man. As it is, he is probably sunning himself on a beach halfway around the world. After something like this, he will lie low for a long time and the trail will grow cold. If we want to catch him, we have to move fast.”

Max was under no illusion that he could trust Fournier, but his points were valid. He could never share everything, but maybe he could give him just enough to help point him in the right direction. “I will pull together what I can and get it to you in the morning.”

“Good,” Fournier said, turning to leave, “and make sure Samir is on the first flight out tomorrow.”



CHAPTER 11

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

THE bar was decorated in a tacky nautical theme. Thick ropes were wrapped around dry timbers that were meant to look like the pilings of a pier. Fishing nets adorned the walls and were peppered with starfish, crabs, buoys, and nautical flags. A stuffed one-armed pirate with a hook and droopy mustache greeted patrons at the door. Stan Hurley paid the decor a passing glance. As long as they had bourbon and something salty, he didn’t care. Hurley liked to drink. He’d done so on six of the seven continents and had imbibed the best brown liquor that money could buy in the world’s finest establishments, as well as bellied up to makeshift bars in shacks in Third World shitholes and thrown back counterfeited American bourbon that tasted like paint thinner. The Crab Shack at Baltimore Washington International Airport was tasteless, to be sure, but the booze was real, and at the moment that’s all that mattered to the old CIA clandestine service officer.

This Rapp thing had put him in a foul mood—not that he was known for his bubbly personality, but today he was unusually rank. Hurley was a surly bastard, and he’d be the first to admit it. This mess in Paris, though, had him really pissed off. The brown liquid that he swirled around in his glass was helping him focus in the brooding way that so often led him to find the way out of a fucking mess. Hurley blamed himself to a degree, but only because he hadn’t screamed louder and more often and bashed in some heads. Hurley would never dream of laying a hand on Kennedy. She was like family to him, and of course, that was part of the problem. He had survived the blast that had killed Kennedy’s father and had carried the guilt with him every day since. He knew Stansfield was affected similarly, if not worse, and that only added to the problem. It wasn’t that Kennedy didn’t have her talents; it was that they had a big blind spot in their hearts when it came to her. It made it all the harder on Hurley. This was her mess, and he had failed her. He should have jumped in and shut this thing down months ago. He sipped his bourbon and thought back to the first time he laid eyes on Rapp. His gut had told him everything he needed to know. He didn’t like him, and he didn’t trust him. Hurley had tried his best to get him bounced from the program, but Rapp had proven to be tougher to break than he had thought. The little shit had conned them and Kennedy was too naïve to see it. Rapp was all about himself. A one-man wrecking ball, bent on killing every last terrorist son of a bitch he could get his hands on.

A broad grin fell across Hurley’s leathery face. Rapp’s goals at least were worthy. He had to give him that much, but that wasn’t the problem. Hurley wanted to kill the assholes every bit as badly as Rapp did, but it was a bit more complicated than that. This was a delicate business, where patience was every bit the virtue. Yes, you had to have the mind and stomach for killing and getting your hands messy, but you also had to have the patience of a hunter. They called it “clandestine” for a reason. It was important to keep a low profile and keep as many people in the dark as possible. Rapp had blazed a damn trail of bodies around the Mediterranean and had brought way too much attention to their work. They’d argued about it in London only a few months ago. Hurley had tried his best to get Rapp drunk enough to open up. About all he got out of him was that Rapp didn’t care if they knew he was coming after them. He wanted it that way. He wanted his targets sleeping with one eye open. He wanted them to know that he was coming after them.

Hurley had blown his lid. Unleashed a tirade on Rapp, who seemed impervious to everything he told him. When Hurley demanded a response, Rapp calmly explained the psychological toll that he planned on extracting from these men. That it wasn’t enough to simply kill them. He wanted them to lie awake at night and wonder who was after them. He wanted them to spend their entire waking day glancing over their shoulders and looking under every car they rode in and every bed they slept in. He wanted to drive them insane. Hurley knew he had his own issues, but he was starting to worry that Rapp had a screw loose. And then Rapp explained his motive. Thousands of people the world over lay awake at night in agonizing pain, lamenting the loss of loved ones at the hands of these cowards. Rapp wanted them to experience genuine fear. He wanted them to be stuck alone with their thoughts, and have to confront what they had done and realize that it was going to lead to their own death.

Hurley remembered the involuntary shudder that had crawled up his back that night. He remembered looking across at Rapp and thinking he was someone to be feared, and Stan Hurley didn’t fear anyone. Sipping his bourbon at the bar, he thought back to that night in London and wondered why he hadn’t stopped it all then. If he had gone back to the shrink or Stansfield they would have pulled Rapp in, but there was a part of Hurley that savored the idea of unleashing Rapp on these fuck sticks. America had grown too cautious—had turned the other cheek a dozen too many times, as far as Hurley was concerned. There was something basic and satisfying about stepping back and letting Rapp continue on his spree. Hurley knew now it had been a mistake—a horrible one. This quiet little operation had gone public in a very bad way, and it was his responsibility to make sure the mess was cleaned up, before it mushroomed into something worse.

He stared into the amber booze as if it were a fire and allowed his mind to drift down a corridor and consider an option that he was none too fond of using. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to kill one of his brothers, but the others had been traitors. Three of them in total over all these years, and he hadn’t so much as batted an eye at the order. He remembered each kill as if had been yesterday. The first two he’d shot in the head and the third he’d nearly decapitated with a long combat knife. He wondered if he would have to kill Rapp. The matter had not been discussed, and as far as Hurley was concerned, it didn’t need to be. Rapp would either get his shit together and come in like he was told, or Hurley would be left with no other option.

The problem, Hurley knew, was Rapp’s maverick streak. The little shit was uncontrollable and clever as hell. He had played Kennedy to perfection. This was her disaster, but Hurley should have been more forceful. It was as if they were two squabbling parents and Rapp was their child. They had argued in front of him, he saw his opening, and he had learned to pit them against each other. He had used it to get what he wanted and now Hurley was being called in to tidy things up. Rapp was cocky, arrogant, and an uncontrollable loose cannon, but one question remained—was he a traitor?

Hurley was of two minds on this one. Part of him hoped Rapp was and part of him desperately wanted them all to walk away from this madness and allow things to cool down. Everything that Hurley had predicted had come true in Paris, and now it was his responsibility to fix it. He’d been warning both Stansfield and Kennedy for months that they were giving Rapp too much latitude. That sooner or later he was going to step in it and create a major incident. They continued to point to Rapp’s results as if the ends somehow justified the means. Hurley knew different. Discipline was paramount in this line of work and Rapp was anything but disciplined. He was a cowboy who had a habit of deviating from the operational game plan as a matter of course.

Hurley took a swig and sucked in some air through his lips. He wanted a cigarette something fierce. Unfortunately, while he’d spent the last thirty-some years trotting around the globe killing bad guys, the wussification of America had taken hold. Now if he wanted to smoke he had to travel halfway back down the concourse to some specially designated glass room where all the smokers were on display like zoo animals. He’d visited the room only once, and was so aggravated by all the uptight do-gooders who walked by with their condemning looks that he swore he’d never do it again.

“Fucking sheep,” Hurley mumbled to himself. “They don’t have a fucking clue.”

“Excuse me?” the man sitting to Hurley’s right asked.

Hurley didn’t feel like it, but he put a smile on his face. “Sorry, just talking to myself.” He stared back into his drink and hoped the guy would drop it. He needed to round up his team and get on a flight. Kicking the shit out of some businessman might complicate things. Fortunately, the guy left him alone and Hurley got back to thinking about cigarettes and how he couldn’t wait to get to France. Say what you want about the French, at least they still let you smoke.

A looming figure approached from the concourse and grabbed the open stool to Hurley’s left. He saw Victor in the reflection of the bar mirror. That wasn’t his real name, but it was what they all called him. His real name was Chet Bramble, and while he wasn’t very soft around the edges, he was someone Hurley could depend on. Victor didn’t take a shit without asking for permission, and that was the way Hurley liked it. If it had been Victor and him in France none of this would have happened. Victor knew how to follow orders, and Hurley was too smart to miss four bodyguards. For the hundredth time since hearing about the debacle Hurley asked himself how Rapp could have fucked things up so badly.

“Steve and Todd are here,” the big man said.

Hurley looked over at Victor. His appearance was menacing, which was both an asset and a drawback. Big men were nice to have around if you needed heavy lifting, or you wanted to scare the crap out of someone, but they weren’t good for clandestine work. They attracted too much attention. In addition to his large stature, Victor scared people. Pending violence hung on him like a neon sign. His size wasn’t freakish by any means. He was six-foot-four and weighed a touch more than 250 pounds. It was his block head, thick neck, and broad shoulders that made him stand out. His barrel chest tapered to a relatively narrow waist and a set of powerful legs. And size was not his only problem. His most prominent feature was a hooded brow that hung like a cliff over a pair of cold black eyes. There were plenty of people who didn’t like Victor. He’d been run out of the army for punching an officer. Hurley had been in the army himself and could relate to anyone who thought that the big green machine was a little too monolithic. He’d seen his fair share of officers who could use a good smack, so it was easy for him to turn a blind eye to Victor’s transgressions.

Besides, Hurley liked having a big rottweiler around to keep people on edge. He held up his glass and shook it for the bartender. The slight man in a puffy pirate shirt hustled over. Hurley ordered another drink and a beer for Victor. That was another thing he liked about Victor. He could handle his booze. He wasn’t one of those uptight military academy pussies who had to do everything by the book, or one of those stiff feds. This was not a by-the-book business. Their job was to break laws left and right and not get caught.

“I fuckin’ hate traveling without my gun.”

Hurley turned to look at Victor. The man was clearly agitated. “Calm down,” he snarled. Speaking out of the side of his mouth, Hurley said, “Why the fuck do you think I spend all that time teaching you idiots how to use your hands? A guy as strong as you doesn’t need a gun.”

“Unless I’m in a gunfight.” Victor frowned and crumpled his cocktail napkin.

“When we fly, we all play by the same rules. No guns.”

“Why didn’t we take one of the Company jets?”

Hurley didn’t like having to explain himself to subordinates, but he decided he’d give Victor this one answer. “We’re trying to keep a low profile. Don’t worry . . . I’ve made arrangements. Assets will meet us, and they’ll have all the guns you want.”

Victor took a swig of his beer, chewed on his bottom lip for a second, and then in a quiet voice asked, “Are you finally going to let me kill this little shit?”

Hurley contemplated his fresh drink and the question at the same time. Victor liked to cut to the heart of the matter rather than dance around an issue. “I didn’t decide to bring you along for your looks.”

Satisfied with the answer, Victor smiled and took a big swig of beer.

Hurley saw how pleased his dog was with the answer and it gave him pause. Those traitors he’d killed—he’d been following orders. There was never any joy in it. Victor seemed downright thrilled over the prospect of killing a fellow team member. Hurley knew there was no love lost between the two, but this seemed to be taking it a little too far. “Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Why?” Victor growled, “You hate the little fuck just as much as I do.”

“How I feel about him is none of your business,” Hurley snapped. “We’re going to give him a chance to come in on his own.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Hurley looked into his drink for a long moment and then drained it in two big gulps. He set the glass down on the bar and threw down some bills. As he stood he said, “If he doesn’t come in all bets are off.”

Hurley started to walk away, while behind him, Victor took a couple of big swigs and drew his forearm across his mouth to reveal a broad grin. He was clearly happy about the prospect of ending Rapp’s life.



CHAPTER 12

PARIS, FRANCE

MONSIGNOR de Fleury shuffled his feet as fast as they would carry him. He had known what he would do even before Fournier arrived. The three dark-skinned visitors had an ominous presence, or at least two of them did. The tall, well-dressed one was nice enough, but the other two were wicked men. They reeked of menace. The priest had facilitated many such meetings and was used to dealing with bodyguards. These two were not part of a security detail. They did not have that caring, watchful way about them. They were concerned only with themselves.

De Fleury was a faithful man, but that faith was placed in God and not men. He had seen what evil men were capable of, and as a shepherd, it was his job to help protect the flock from the wolves. These men were not sheep, and they most certainly didn’t have the best interest of France in their hearts. They were killers. De Fleury had dealt with such men before, and he could see it in their eyes and in the way they moved.

He did not know what the slick-talking Fournier was up to, but the old priest was going to find out. The church was closed and other than the two night watchmen who were patrolling the perimeter, he was by himself. De Fleury moved through the shadows, through the transept, and just before the pulpit he turned right and shuffled down the outer aisle of the nave, past the lesser altars and finally to the wooden confessionals. He carefully opened the third door and stepped in. He left the light off, doing everything by feel. After sitting on the cushioned seat he leaned his head against the wood-paneled back wall, just above an iron grate that circulated air from the chapel below. De Fleury had discovered the acoustic peculiarity many years ago while dutifully listening to confessions. A private mass was being said in the crypt chapel, and the voices floated up from below with such clarity that he found it difficult to concentrate on the penitent sitting on the other side of the screen.

De Fleury had kept his contacts with French Intelligence over the years and a famous church like Sacré-Coeur with throngs of tourists coming and going was the perfect place to meet sources and operatives. This Fournier fellow liked the idea of meeting in the crypt for some reason, and de Fleury made no effort to dissuade the man, or tell him that his conversations could be heard from the confessional above. Secrets were something the priest was accustomed to hearing and not repeating, but he did not eavesdrop for his own indulgence. There was something about this Fournier fellow that was off. It was nothing drastic, but de Fleury had spent a lifetime observing people. In addition to the agent’s being rather taken with himself, there was a shiftiness about him that the priest noted from the beginning. The man was an actor and a manipulator, and de Fleury guessed that the underlying drive was the need to feed his narcissistic personality.

It was shocking to him that the Directorate hadn’t picked up on these traits earlier in his career. To put someone with his personality in charge of the Special Action Division seemed to be a very dangerous thing. The previous meetings in the crypt had mostly been with double agents who worked for other governments, and while de Fleury had heard some very interesting things over the past few years, there had been nothing that he considered a grievous offense to the Republic. Tonight, however, he had an ominous feeling that the Republic’s best interests were not being guarded.

As the words began to float up from the crypt, his concern only grew. The guests were Muslims and their lack of respect was obscene. Before the priest could get over his initial shock at the slurs against his beautiful basilica, Fournier said something that took his breath away. Surely they weren’t talking about the bloody hotel murders that had gripped Paris? Within seconds they answered that question beyond any reasonable doubt. The priest grew increasingly alarmed with each passing moment by what he heard. What in hell was Fournier doing associating with such people? Why would he aid them in any way?

It was money, of course, and some arrangement that the DGSE had made with these animals. A Faustian deal undoubtedly made by careless men with no understanding of history. De Fleury had seen firsthand the horrific results of appeasement. It was a path chosen by feebleminded people who were morally incapable of confronting evil. He saw many parallels between the Nazis, the communists, and these jihadists. They were all sociopaths at heart—obsessed with their own tribal desires and utterly incapable of conferring justice or compassion on those outside the tribe. If you were not one of them, you were a lesser human, and thus deserved to be treated in any way they saw fit. And if that meant blowing up airliners and buses full of innocent civilians, then so be it.

De Fleury did not move when the meeting ended. The normal protocol was for Fournier and his guests to let themselves out at properly spaced intervals from different locations. The doors would lock behind them. The priest sat motionless in the dark confessional for a long time analyzing what he had learned and considering what he would do with the information. His contacts in the government were not what they once were. Almost all of them were either dead or retired. And he couldn’t say for sure that he could trust any of the few he had with information of this magnitude. There was always the press, but de Fleury had no fondness for them and no stomach for airing the dirty secrets of the Republic on the front pages of the daily rags. He would have to find another way.

Caution was of the utmost importance. A man like Fournier would do anything to protect his image. The priest knew how it would play out. At his age, it would take nothing to suffocate him while he slept or toss him down a flight of stairs. Either would kill him, and either would be so plausible the police wouldn’t even bother with an autopsy. De Fleury stood and stepped from the confessional. As he worked his way quietly toward the rectory a possibility occurred to him—a man whom he had helped a long time ago. He was a foreigner, but a trusted ally. He was still in a position to do something with the information. Maybe he could deal with Fournier and these men without having to go public. The old priest decided he would sleep on it. In the morning he would pray for guidance from the Holy Spirit, and if it were to be, he would make the call.



CHAPTER 13




SUNDAY morning arrived with the sound of church bells clanging in the distance. Rapp slowly opened his eyes and took inventory of his pains and aches. He was surprised that his shoulder didn’t feel worse. He clenched his left fist and felt the burn go deep. He took some solace in the fact that it was slightly better than the day before. Raising his right hand from under the sheets he noted the time. It was 9:03. He had slept for nearly twelve hours, and that was after napping for six hours the previous afternoon. He remembered waking once during the night to use the bathroom and take another handful of painkillers. He rolled his head toward the window, looking at the shades framed in white light—his mind already working through the events that had brought him to this hotel, and the one question that he still couldn’t answer. Who could he trust?

The desire to flee is not always wise. That was what he’d told himself while riding the Metro in the early morning after the slaughter at the hotel and now he found himself repeating the mantra once more. He had the skills to disappear, but what would he do with the rest of his life? It was one of many things Rapp had learned in his new line of work. He knew he’d changed a great deal in the past year. All of his senses had been sharpened. He could no longer simply walk into a room. Faces, potential threats, and exits all had to be assessed and categorized, and casually so as to not draw any attention. Everything he did was strategic planning on an extremely high level. How do you outthink your opponent when the stakes are life and death? Every move, every variation of each move, has to be analyzed and the risks weighed against options until you can zero in on the path that gives you the best chance for success.

After leaving the warehouse at first light his needs dictated his actions. Shelter, care, and food were at the top of his list, and they all had to be obtained without attracting any attention. That was when the urge to flee was the strongest. To just jump on the closest Metro train and go straight to the Gare de Lyon train station, gather his emergency bag from the locker, and flee the country. He could be across the border into Switzerland in three hours. Run straight into the arms of Greta and there was a good chance Hurley would know within a day. The first order of business was almost always to get out of the country where you had committed the crime, and Rapp had been told specifically on this one that he was to get out of France immediately after killing Tarek.

Getting ambushed and shot had obviously complicated things, but Rapp was disinclined to follow through with those orders for multiple reasons. The police were sure to be on high alert after the shootout at the hotel. They would be monitoring the ports and train stations and the immigration and border control agents would be scrutinizing every detail. While Rapp seriously doubted that they had a description of him, there was enough doubt to make him hesitant. He’d lost blood, and he was in pain. He could chance it, but an alert border agent might have him escorted into a private room for some interrogation and a strip search. Once his shirt was off there would be no denying that he’d been shot.

Fluent in French, Rapp liked the odds of staying put in Paris and blending in with the city’s ten million inhabitants. Greta could collect a few things for him and then she could come to him. He did get on the first Metro train he found, however, and after a transfer he was emerging from several hundred feet underground into the grand Gare de Lyon station. Traffic was light, but as he’d guessed the police were unusually alert. Rapp, with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of the stolen jacket, kept his chin tucked in and his eyes uninterested as if he was just another laborer heading off to work. The lockers were located near the bathrooms. He purchased an espresso and a croissant from a vendor and used his wait to casually determine if any of the police had taken notice of him. They hadn’t, so he proceeded to the lockers, retrieved his backpack, and stepped into one of the stalls in the men’s room.

Four minutes later he emerged in a pair of jeans, hiking boots, blue Roots sweatshirt, and a Montreal Canadiens cap. The Palestinian passport had been torn up and flushed down the toilet and the worker’s clothes stuffed into a trashcan. His backup gun was still strapped around his ankle, but other than that he was just another tourist. He left the terminal and stepped onto the first waiting bus, not caring where it would take him as long as it was quickly away from the station. A few minutes later he found himself rolling through central Paris. When the air brakes hissed at the hideous Pompidou Center, Rapp got off. He knew of a Best Western just around the corner—the type of place that catered to tourists eager to be near Paris’s great museums.

A half block later he found a pay phone. It was brand new, shiny stainless steel; France Telecom’s newest card-operated model to help thwart city degenerates who were fond of breaking into the coin-operated machines. Rapp slid his telecard into the slot, grabbed the receiver, and punched in a number from memory. She answered on the third ring.

“Good morning, Frau Greta,” Rapp said in French. “How are you?”

“I am wonderful. Especially after hearing your voice.” Her relief was obvious.

“Good. I can’t wait to see you, but there has been a change in plans.” The chance that Greta’s phone was tapped was remote, but nonetheless, Rapp kept things as vague as possible and used their prearranged codes. “I can’t leave town. My boss dumped a bunch of work on me. Do you think maybe you could come to me instead?”

“Absolutely,” she said without hesitation, concern creeping into her voice.

“Could you drive?” It would be nice to have a car in case they needed to flee. “Maybe we could take a drive into the country tomorrow?”

“Yes, I can drive. Is everything all right?”

Rapp could tell she was worried. “Everything is fine, darling. Well, not perfect, but I’ll live.” He realized that would not calm her down, so he added, “There’s just a few complications, that’s all. Once you get here everything will be fine. Can you meet me tomorrow morning?”

“Not today?”

Rapp needed some food and a lot of sleep. And he needed some silence to sort things out. “I’m afraid today won’t work. I have to get some things taken care of, but I promise, tomorrow I will have all day to spend with you.”

“And the rest of the week?”

“And the rest of the week, too,” Rapp lied. He would explain things in person and hoped she would understand. “I have to run, darling. Can you meet me at ten tomorrow morning?”

“Yes. Where . . . the apartment?”

“Not the apartment,” Rapp said a little too quickly. Recovering, he said, “I will email you the information.” He felt a wave of pain coming down on him and he grabbed the top of the phone booth with his right hand. “I have to go, darling, but I can’t wait to see you.” Rapp practically bit off his tongue after he spoke the last word.

“I can’t wait to see you. I just wish it was today.”

Rapp closed his eyes and hung on to the case of the pay phone. The pain kept building and Greta kept talking, asking him if something was wrong. He finally managed to say, “I’ll be all right.” His voice was tight and clipped. “I have to go now, darling. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Rapp was pulling the receiver away from his ear when he heard her tell him she loved him. It was a first for the two of them and Rapp wasn’t sure if he was unwilling or unable to respond. He hung up the phone, knowing his nonresponse would be an issue. The throbbing pain slowly receded. Rapp retrieved his card, took several deep breaths, and then steadied himself enough to start down the sidewalk.

It was just past 7:00 a.m. when he crossed the hotel’s small lobby. He spoke English to the man behind the desk, who assured him that while he did not have a room available at this exact moment, he expected one to free up within the hour. Rapp presented a Canadian passport and a Visa card with the name Bill Johnson. On the advice of a wise Swiss banker, he had obtained the passport and charge card on his own without telling his CIA handlers. He devoured a big breakfast, did his best to ignore the pain in his shoulder, and scanned the papers, even though he knew the killings had happened too late to make the morning editions. The man behind the desk was true to his word and within an hour he was standing at Rapp’s table.

“Monsieur Johnson,” the man said, “your room is ready.”

Within minutes Rapp was in his room sitting on the edge of the bed, transfixed by the TV. The hotel murders were the hot topic on every local channel. The BBC had even picked up the story, but the only thing that Rapp learned with any surprise was the death toll. At first he thought they had their facts wrong. He had killed five people—Tarek and the four bodyguards, and he assumed that the prostitute had also been killed. That accounted for six total deaths. Who were the other three?

His shoulder throbbing, Rapp turned off the TV and headed off in search of some supplies. He kept a wide-spectrum antibiotic in his emergency bag, and a few other essentials, but he needed other supplies to clean and dress the wound, as well as some painkillers and other toiletries. It was now close to ten in the morning and the tourists were out in droves. Rapp hit three different pharmacies in a four-block area, wanting to spread out his purchases so as to not draw too much attention.

Every time he passed a pay phone he had to resist the urge to call Kennedy. He was still trying to figure out if he could trust her. On the face of it he thought he could, but the reality of their curious profession was that he didn’t really know any of his coworkers. They were all professional liars. Rapp passed a young couple holding a map and arguing. For some bizarre reason he wondered if he could kill Kennedy. Assuming she had set him up, of course. Hurley would be easy, at least in terms of the decision, but Kennedy was different. He liked her.

The pain from the gunshot wound was getting worse, and was interfering with his ability to focus, so he headed back to the hotel and popped some painkillers. He took another shower before cleaning and dressing the wound. With the pain numbed, he drew the curtains and climbed under the covers. Pain was something he was accustomed to, but this was more acute than the average pull or sprain. It went deep, touching nerves that had never before been touched by an outside object. The discomfort was making sleep nearly impossible, but after thirty minutes the drugs kicked in. Rapp lay there staring up at the ceiling, floating away while trying to understand where the other three bodies had come from. He wondered if he had somehow killed the last man in the hallway. Even then, it meant two more bodies that he couldn’t account for.

His dreams were wild and senseless. A jumbled mess of faces known and unknown. When he awoke later in the day, he ordered room service and watched more news on the television. There was little new information other than the announcement that four of the victims were bodyguards for the Libyan oil minister. Rapp scoffed at the information. If the men were bodyguards, why weren’t they with Tarek as he moved about the city? The answer was obvious. They weren’t bodyguards. They were a team sent to ambush him and Tarek was the bait.

Rapp fell asleep once again, his mind wrestling with all of the implications that flowed from what seemed to be the truth. Had Tarek volunteered for this mission or had he been betrayed by his own brotherhood? Had his value to his organization declined so much that they deemed him expendable? How had they known that he would be next on Rapp’s list? That was ultimately the problem that Rapp kept coming back to, for it implied something far more sinister and close to home.

As Rapp looked around the room, he thought of the close circle of people who knew of his existence. The Orion Team was a small clandestine unit, intentionally set up outside Langley with the explicit purpose of hunting terrorists. There was a firewall between the group and Langley for an obvious reason—there were too many bureaucrats in the building, many of them with law degrees, who did not understand the nature of their enemy. Men and women who had never served in the field, men and women who had no grasp of their enemies’ lethal designs, and who sincerely thought that everything must be done in the full light of congressional approval and proper legal channels, as if they were conducting a police action.

Rapp sat up and swung his feet from under the covers and to the floor in one motion. He glanced at the bandage on his shoulder and was pleased to see no sign of blood. Kennedy entered his mind. She was his most direct link. He saw her as someone who was genuinely committed to what they were doing, but then again she wasn’t exactly an open book. There was Rob Ridley, who ran the advance teams and was there to assist Rapp on the back end if he got in trouble. Stan Hurley, the relentless cuss, knew virtually every detail, as did Thomas Stansfield, the deputy director of Operations at Langley. How many others, Rapp had no idea. Kennedy claimed that there were only a handful of people, but it was no stretch to think that others had been brought into the loop without Rapp’s knowledge. A mole in a spy agency was not a novel idea, and the idea caused Rapp’s healthy paranoia to kick in.

Rapp hadn’t spent much time analyzing the motives of someone who would betray their country. Hatred, jealousy, a martyr complex, or some Dudley Do-Right who saw only black and white and the letter of the law—Rapp didn’t really care. He knew as surely as he knew that he had killed Tarek and the others that if he found the person who had set him up, he would strangle that person with his bare hands. The thought that someone back in Washington who was more than likely sitting in a cushy air-conditioned office had sold him out for money or some arrangement enraged him. Who it could be was a big question, and Rapp wondered if he could muster the skills and assets to find out.

He sat there for several minutes, the pain in his shoulder pulsing back to life, analyzing the various paths he could take. Disappearing was still an option and he had the skills to pull it off—at least for a while. Would they bother to look for him? If they knew the whole story, probably not, but the way the press was reporting things they would think he had killed the prostitute and three innocent civilians, and there was no guarantee that they would know anything beyond what the press was reporting. Rapp didn’t like that. Intuitively, he knew spending the rest of his life waiting for them to kick in his door was no way to live. More important, he believed in the mission and had no desire to abandon it. He cracked a smile as he briefly thought of staying with the mission, but doing so on his own. Hurley would flip out and hunt him down.

Slowly, Rapp realized there was really only one good avenue open to him. He would have to initiate contact and see how they reacted. He was the one with a bullet hole in his shoulder. They could bitch all they wanted about their protocols, but he was the one getting shot at. He would call Kennedy. It would be a day and a half late, they would be on edge, and if they believed the press reports there was a chance they’d authorized a kill order for him. That possibility gave Rapp an idea. He was a virtual needle in a haystack right now. If they were looking for him, there was just one logical place to start. Rapp considered the dangers involved in going there. Rubbing his eyes, he tried to work the fog of the painkillers from his mind. He was going to need all his wits about him for what was coming next.



CHAPTER 14




WHEN Rapp stood up, his shoulder immediately let him know that it was not happy. He froze between the bed and the bathroom, not sure if he should push on or lie back down. The pain, though, receded more quickly than it had the day before. He was either getting used to it, or it was getting better. He moved into the small bathroom and checked out his shoulder in the mirror. It didn’t look good. Bright red and purple bruising was spreading beyond the white bandage in every direction. None of it was migrating down his arm, though, which he took as a positive sign. Then he remembered he’d spent a long time on his back.

Turning to the side, he craned his stiff neck as far as he could and caught the reflection of his back in the mirror. Instead of bright red, the bruising was purple and almost black in a few spots. Rapp cringed and asked himself if it was possible that the bullet had clipped his lateral thoracic artery. He shook his head at his own question. If that big tube was nicked he would have bled out and died a long time ago. Besides, that main highway ran pretty deep. When he’d bandaged the wound the day before he’d done his best to line up the entry and exit wounds. The bullet had punched through close to the middle of his left shoulder and exited closer to the outside. The angle should have carried it clear of the hub of arteries and veins that carried blood to and from his left arm. It was more likely that a good number of capillaries and plenty of tissue had been damaged. The internal bleeding had probably stopped and the blood had pooled while he’d slept. At least that’s what he hoped.

He stared at his reflection in the mirror. He made no attempt to deceive himself. The dark black eyes that were staring back at him were the eyes of a killer. Somewhere in the distance he heard more church bells. He briefly considered going to mass and then with a heavy sadness told himself that God would not want him in his house. Thou shalt not kill was a pretty big one. Rapp felt himself heading down one of those dark hallways of introspection that led to pity, recrimination, and doubt. After he’d lost his girlfriend and thirty-four fellow Syracuse University students in the Pan Am Lockerbie terrorist attack, there’d been times where he allowed himself to walk down these sunless corridors. After a lot of tears and a lot of time spent feeling sorry for himself, he began to recognize that he could be lost in these hallways for a long time if he didn’t practice some mental discipline. The bleak corridors of his mind were full of pain and weakness and no answers.

Rapp flashed himself a devilish grin as he remembered another popular biblical phrase, the one that had pulled him out of his self-pity—an eye for an eye. The Ten Commandments were bullet points. A quick reference on how to live your life between the lines. The Bible was the more detailed reference, and it was filled with examples of how the wicked should be punished, especially the Old Testament. Thou shalt not kill, unless it’s a piece of shit terrorist . . . or a traitor or a rapist or a pedophile . . . the list could go on for a long time.

Rapp had bigger and more immediate problems to deal with at the moment. He would have to put off debating his salvation for another day. Right now he was more focused on finding out how Kennedy would react to what he had to say. After that, he would run his colleagues through some tests to see whom he could trust, and if he got the feeling that he was being played he might have to disappear for a few months. Even as he thought it he knew it wasn’t an option. Lying low was not how he worked. He would find out who had betrayed him and then he would kill them.

The knock on the door pulled him from his thoughts of retribution. He moved quickly for the silenced pistol on the nightstand and then remembered Greta was supposed to meet him. He kept the pistol as a precaution and started for the door. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw his reflection in the mirror across the room. He looked like he felt, which was like crap. His dense black hair was shooting out in various directions and he had a thick sheet of stubble, as he had not shaved in two days. That was hardly the worst of it, though. His shoulder was the real problem. He thought about putting on a T-shirt, but it would hurt too much and take too long and Greta was not good at waiting. He knew she’d be mad that he’d put her off for a whole day. He shook his head, sighed, and figured he might as well get it over with. She was going to find out sooner or later.

Rapp stepped softly to the door, stopping a few feet away, and peered through the peephole. There was Greta, all five-foot-six of Nordic perfection. Blue eyes, high cheekbones, and a strong jaw that tapered to a little apple chin. Her blond hair was pulled back in a high ponytail as it almost always was. Rapp preferred it that way. The minimalist look framed her perfect face. In the year he’d known her, Rapp had seen grown men, complete strangers, become so fixated on Greta that they walked into things. She was literally a head-turner. It had irritated Rapp at first, having to deal with all the gawking men when they were in public. After a while he decided to take it as a compliment. If men wanted to stare, then they could go ahead. He soon learned, also, that Greta was more than capable of defending her honor. She did her best to ignore the stares, but occasionally if some man was too forward or too obvious she could go nuclear.

Rapp watched her purse her lips, and then she reached out to knock again. Her patience was wearing thin. Rapp reached down, grabbed the rubber wedge he’d placed under the door, and undid the chain just as Greta started knocking again. He opened the door and turned his left shoulder away so it would not be the first thing she saw. Rapp also kept the gun concealed behind the door. He smiled and said, “Sorry, I was in the bathroom.”

Greta’s bright blue eyes narrowed with concern. “You don’t look very good.”

“Why thank you, darling. You look fabulous as always.” Rapp motioned for her to come in.

She grabbed the handle of her wheeled suitcase and strode forward. Rapp closed and chained the door while she looked around the small space. She finished her survey at approximately the same time that Rapp finished sticking the wedge under the door. He expected her to act a certain way and she didn’t disappoint. Greta was not the type to panic and begin screaming about the obvious. Her eyes zeroed in on the white bandage and her jaw tightened with concern. She stepped closer and slowly reached out. Her soft fingers touched the skin around the bandage, and Rapp felt a small shock of electricity run through his upper body. She’d done it to him the first time they’d met and she could still do it to him. She had the softest, most feminine hands he’d ever encountered. Her touch could make him weak in the knees.

Greta worked her way around his side so she could get a view of his back. Rapp heard her gasp slightly. He winced, not because he was in pain, but because he feared what might come next, more than likely a lot of questions. She surprised him instead by making a statement.

“You’ve been shot.”

Rapp’s throat felt suddenly dry. “Yeah,” he croaked.

She ran her hand around his shoulder, both front and back. “And it would appear you have not seen a doctor.”

Rapp frowned and said, “Not really an option.”

Her expression remained neutral. “I don’t suppose you are going to tell me how this happened?”

Rapp shrugged and said, “Maybe later.”

Greta frowned and shook her head.

If she folded her arms across her chest he was really in trouble, so he said, “I have a few things I still need to figure out.” Then he reached out with his good hand, the one with the silenced pistol in it, and drew her in.

She placed her hands on his chest and rested her right cheek just above them.

“I’m just glad you’re here,” he said, and then kissed the top of her head. The gun was in the way so he tossed it onto the bed.

“I was afraid this would happen,” Greta said, her voice filled with gloom.

Rapp waited a long moment and then said, “Yeah . . . I can’t say I wasn’t aware of the risk but I thought . . .” His voice trailed off.

“You thought that you were indestructible. That you would always be the one doing the killing, and now you have found out that you are human like the rest of us. How does that make you feel?”

Rapp half rolled his eyes and said, “You know me and feelings . . . they don’t really go together.”

“That may be true with other people, but not with me. I am not judging you. You should know that by now. I don’t know everything that you do, but I have a pretty good idea. Have I ever complained?”

“No.”

“That’s right. I am not here to change you. I respect what you do, but I most definitely would like to see you live.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Well . . . then you need to be more careful. Learn from your mistakes.”

Rapp thought of the hotel room, the five jackasses with the suppressed MP5s, and made his first big mistake of the morning. “You think this shit is easy?”

“Excuse me?” she asked, pushing back.

Rapp realized his mistake. “I’m sorry, it’s been a rough few days. I can’t tell you what happened other than to say some other people didn’t do their jobs and I ended up with my ass getting shot at.”

“Stan?”

Greta’s grandfather had close ties with Stan Hurley and Thomas Stansfield. He was a very discreet and successful Swiss banker, which came in handy in Rapp’s line of work. He didn’t want to get her directly involved in this, though, so he suppressed his theories and said, “I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.” In an effort to redirect the conversation he said, “You’re handling this pretty well.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought you’d be mad.”

“I’m not exactly thrilled but I don’t see how getting angry would help . . . at least right now. There will be plenty of time for that later, but for now I need to have a look at your wound.”

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