The Last Man

Chapter 48

Rappahannock County, Virginia

Stan Hurley arrived a few minutes before eight o’clock. The looming subject of his terminal diagnosis was not discussed for the simple reason that the old cuss had already told Kennedy they weren’t going to make a big deal out of it. He apparently mumbled something about the fact that we’re all dying, some just a little sooner than others.

Lewis made shrimp fettuccini and spinach salad for the group. Over dinner Rapp continued to press Kennedy, Hurley, and Lewis about Rickman. Rapp remembered that Rickman had an ex-wife and a daughter whom he rarely discussed. In fact Rapp remembered only one time where he’d heard Rickman mention them. It was at an old Soviet base in southern Uzbekistan just after the Taliban had had their asses handed to them by American airpower, a couple of dozen U.S. Special Operations warriors, a few Clandestine Service guys, and a ragtag army of mostly Northern Alliance types. Rickman had been key in putting the whole thing together and it was the first time since 9/11 that they felt like they had really hit back.

So it was time to celebrate, and with the Taliban in full retreat and running for the Pakistani border, the booze began to flow. Even back then, Rapp knew Rickman as a guy with a big brain who had a knack for putting together complicated operations while never losing sight of the various pitfalls. And he did it all with a calm focus on the endgame, something that was no easy thing, with so many moving parts and an uncooperative enemy. For reasons that Rapp didn’t fully understand, that night, a sloppy Rickman decided to unload his personal problems on Rapp. Rickman had a wife whom he’d never really loved, and he was pretty sure she’d never really loved him either. They had a daughter who had reached her teens and hated her father for being gone so much, yet when he was home he couldn’t get her to say as much as hello. It was all going down the tubes and Rickman vacillated between thinking he should save it and being pretty sure it wasn’t worth saving. It was a classic one-person, devil’s advocate, argued by a single drunken man for the better part of an evening. Rapp succeeded in changing the discussion multiple times, only to have Rickman steer it right back into the muddy ditch.

The next day it was not brought up and it was never discussed again. A few months later Rapp heard that Rickman’s wife had filed for divorce. It was not an unusual situation. During the best of times the Clandestine Service was hard on families. It took a unique spouse to be able to hold down the fort while you were off advancing America’s policies in the gutters of the world. The divorce rate was high before 9/11. After the attacks they skyrocketed. The CIA never stopped deploying, and the deployments lasted years, families suffered, and marriages fell apart. Now Rapp wanted to know if they’d ever had any discussions with Rickman about the divorce and the stress of his job.

Kennedy looked at Lewis and said, “We did have a discussion about bringing him back.”

“I remember,” Lewis said.

“It wasn’t the divorce so much. Remember, we were dealing with a lot of those. We woke up one day and realized he’d been over there for six straight years.” Kennedy looked as if she was reliving a mistake. “I was in Kabul on business and sat down with him to see how things were going. He never complained. Not once.”

“Never?” Hurley said in a doubtful tone.

“Never. He had completely immersed himself in the job. He was a walking encyclopedia of information about who was fighting for whom. It got to the point where JSOC wouldn’t launch an operation without checking with him first. They’d bring him a name, sometimes a photo and a location, and Rick would say things like, I think you’ve got the wrong Mohammad. The one you’re looking for is in the next village over. At any rate I sat down, did a review, and then offered him a promotion to come back to Langley. He didn’t even consider it. Said his skills would be wasted at Langley.”

Hurley shrugged. “He wouldn’t be the first guy to think that.”

Kennedy took a sip of wine and agreed.

“You could have forced him to come back,” Rapp said.

“I thought about it, but when I checked with JSOC and some other in-country assets they almost had heart attacks. To a person, they said they couldn’t manage without him.”

“So your solution,” Lewis said, “was to bring him back for two weeks of briefings.”

Hurley scoffed, “Let me guess… you made him get on the couch with Doc here.”

Kennedy shrugged. “Standard procedure. I make everyone do them. Even you two.”

“A lot of good it did me,” Hurley said sarcastically. Turning to Lewis, he quickly added, “Sorry, Doc. Not your fault. I’m pretty fucked up.”

Lewis smiled. “No offense taken, and you’re not fucked up… just complicated.”

“No,” Rapp said, “I’m pretty sure he’s fucked up.”

Hurley roared. “Well, if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.”

“I’m not saying I don’t have issues,” Rapp grinned. “They’re just not as bad as yours.”

“Easy, Junior. Give yourself another thirty years and we’ll see how you’re doing.”

“We all have issues.” Kennedy held up her wineglass and said, “Considering what the two of you have been through I think you’re coping quite well.”

Hurley and Rapp took the words with a silent thanks and then Hurley, ever impatient, looked to Lewis and asked, “So what did you find out when you got Rick on the couch?”

“Not much. We had only had two sessions. Each one about two hours.”

“Did you get a sense that he was holding on too tight?” Rapp asked.

Lewis shook his head. “I didn’t get a sense of anything. You guys,” Lewis said, pointing at Rapp and Hurley, “are two of my more difficult patients. It took me years to earn your trust and you still will only crack that door a fraction. Rickman makes you two look like ideal patients. Have any of you read his jacket?”

Kennedy nodded while Rapp and Hurley shook their heads. “His IQ,” Lewis said, “is 205.”

Hurley scratched his cheek and said, “That doesn’t mean jack shit to me.”

“The highest in the building,” Kennedy said, “by a good margin.”

“The two of you combined,” Lewis said, pointing at Hurley and then Rapp, “might match him.”

“Doc, I’m sure he’s smart as shit, but my experience with guys like that is that they don’t cope real well with life.”

“That’s a fair point. There were a few things I picked up during our session. A potential sense of isolation, difficulty in coping with people, especially those outside his immediate circle. As you said, coping issues.”

“But,” Kennedy quickly added, “coping issues are not unusual for our people when they’ve been abroad for extended periods of time. The two of you have experienced it many times. You come back after enduring some pretty hard stuff and you have no patience for people who want to complain about the mundane.”

Actually, Hurley had a very low tolerance for people in general. “Any chance he went native?”

“We don’t have even close to enough information to say that, but he definitely began to withdraw over the past year.” Lewis was quick to add that he wasn’t passing judgment on anyone. “Looking back on things, it’s much easier to see a pattern. Sickles lost all control of him. It’s almost as if Rickman had become Darren’s boss, or at least stopped answering to him.”

“Irene,” Rapp said, “I really hope you hammer Darren. He’s an incompetent ass and a damn embarrassment.”

Kennedy was getting a lot of advice from a wide range of people regarding what she had to do in the wake of the disaster in Afghanistan. “We’re debriefing him right now. I want to make sure I know everything he knows and then I’ll make the decision on his employment.” She didn’t want the conversation to stray from the point, so she said, “Back to Rick… we don’t have anything definitive, and I’m not sure we will, but I’ve got three of my best analysts going over everything. If he made a mistake they’ll find it.”

Rapp shook his head like he wasn’t buying it. “They won’t find anything. He didn’t make mistakes. He always covered his tracks unless he wanted anyone looking to find something.”

“Like the banker,” Hurley said. He took a gulp of Jack Daniel’s and added, “Is that guy on your approved list, and if he is, what in the fuck is he doing talking to the FBI?”

Langley had a list of private bankers they used to handle funds for black operations. The banks were spread around between Switzerland, Cyprus, Gibraltar, the Caymans, Singapore, and a few other places. The banks and the bankers were thoroughly vetted before they were approved for business. Kennedy was the only person in the building who had possession of the complete list. She shook her head. “No… he’s not on the list.”

“What about the bank?” Rapp asked, thinking that maybe Obrecht had spied on one of his colleagues.

“No. We’ve never done business with this bank or anyone who works there.”

“And you’ve seen this affidavit?” Hurley asked.

“Yes… this afternoon. If we can believe Agent Wilson, and I’m not sure we can, Obrecht claims he did business with both Mitch and Rick. Helped them open several accounts and received deposits of several million dollars in cash. There’s also a safety deposit box.”

“Contents?” Hurley asked.

Kennedy shook her head. “It doesn’t say.”

“And, Mitch, you swear you’ve never seen this guy?”

“Never. I have no idea who he is.”

Hurley looked at Lewis. “Could it be the head injury?”

“It’s too soon to say, but his recall seems to be pretty good. We have yet to find an instance where once he’s reminded of something it doesn’t trigger the recall.”

“I’ve never seen the guy, and besides,” Rapp said looking at Kennedy, “I’ve disclosed all my financials. You’ve seen how well my brother’s done for me. I don’t need to steal money.” Rapp’s brother was a brainiac on Wall Street and had taken Rapp’s savings and turned them into a very nice portfolio.

“You better not have disclosed all your financials,” Hurley said in his typical gruff tone. “Have you learned nothing from me?”

“Stan,” Kennedy said in a chiding tone.

“Stan, nothing,” Hurley shot back. “We’re out there putting our nuts on the chopping block. We don’t get any hazard pay. You know the rule, if we come across some ill-gotten gains along the way they go into our rainy-day fund.”

This was all old-school. Kennedy hated it when they talked this way around her. On a certain level she understood where they were coming from, but it was something she could never condone. “This is the type of talk that gets a man like Wilson all lathered up.”

Hurley slapped his hand through the air, rejecting the complaint. “We’re not stupid. The majority of the stuff we come across gets kicked into the various accounts we’re talking about to help fund these ops, but you can’t begrudge my boys’ taking a little commission along the way. It’s the only insurance we have if we need to run.”

“Well, you shouldn’t need to run.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.” Hurley was getting angry. “Try to tell that to this idiot Wilson and that cock sucker Ferris. Shit.” Hurley set his drink down and grabbed a pack of unfiltered Camels. As he lit the cigarette he caught the look of concern on Kennedy’s face. Hurley exhaled a cloud of smoke into the lights above the table and said, “Listen here, princess. I have cancer. I’m going to die. A couple more of these aren’t going to matter.” Hurley took another drag and then felt bad for the rebuke. Kennedy was like a niece to him. “I’ve had an amazing life. No regrets… at least none that I’m going to tell this group… well, maybe I’ll tell Mitch before I croak, but I don’t want to see any long faces. We’re all dying. The fact that I’ve made it this long is amazing.” Hurley held up his glass. “To a full life.”

They all touched glasses. Kennedy wiped a single tear from her cheek and laughed. “It is pretty amazing that you’ve lived this long. You’ve been smoking those things for as long as I can remember.”

“Before you were born,” Hurley added with a wink and a swig of Jack Daniel’s. “Started at fourteen back in Bowling Green.” Hurley got this faraway look on his face as he thought of his childhood, stint in the military, and then the glory years of working for the CIA behind the Iron Curtain. He had lived a blessed life. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and said, “Back to this banker. I assume we’re digging deep.”

“I have Marcus on it, as well as a few other things. So far nothing to go on but we do have something that… ah, is a little odd.” Kennedy looked almost sheepish as she turned to Rapp. “Something we need to discuss, actually.” She didn’t know exactly how to do this, so she just said it. “Does the name Louie Gould ring a bell?”

The glass of vodka was half full. Rapp looked into it and for a moment considered throwing the whole thing back. Instead he pushed it toward the center of the table and said, “I remember him.”

“You remember what he did?”

Rapp didn’t flinch. “He killed my wife.”

Kennedy swallowed hard and asked, “Do you remember what happened with him in Kabul?”

“That part’s a little fuzzy. I remember seeing him right before all hell broke loose and then nothing.”

Kennedy had been trying to figure out the odds of this strange coincidence. “Would you care to take a guess where Gould does his banking in Switzerland?”

“Herr Obrecht.”

“That’s right. He is Mr. Gould’s private banker.”

“You’re shitting me.” Hurley was out of his chair. “This whole fucking thing is really starting to stink.”

Kennedy was used to this kinetic behavior. Hurley, like Rapp, was not good at sitting still for very long. She likened it to sharks that never stop moving. “Gould has other bankers that he uses, but Obrecht is one of his main ones.”

Hurley paced to the refrigerator, exhaled a cloud of smoke, took a drink, and then came back to the table. “You know what this is starting to look like?”

Kennedy nodded. She’d thought it through.

“A well-planned, multi pronged attack. Layered like the Russians used to do. Confusing as all shit until you got rid of all the deceptions and the feints and focused on their objective.”

“And what’s the objective this time?” Kennedy asked.

“The hell if I know. I mean we know, in a general sense, that this was designed to cripple us, but we don’t know the specifics yet.”

Rapp frowned and shook his head. A memory was coming back to him. A conversation he’d had with Rickman a long time ago. It was vague because Rickman had been talking so fast and flying off on tangents and then circling back.

Kennedy noticed the look on Rapp’s face and asked, “What are you thinking?”

“Something Rick said to me years ago… probably fifteen-plus. I don’t remember all of it, but it was about clandestine operations and how they should be set up and run on multiple levels. It was about recruiting high-placed assets. That it wasn’t enough to just recruit them. To increase our chances for success, secondary and tertiary operations needed to be launched that would distract the watchers.. the guys who would be keeping an eye on our asset to make sure he wasn’t spying for the other side. He was very animated when he made the point that to increase our chances of success we needed to disrupt those people.” Rapp’s face brightened as it started to come back to him. He snapped his fingers. “His idea was to frame the watchers, for example by making it look like they themselves were spies… set up real accounts in their names and if our asset was uncovered make the information public so the watchers would be distracted defending themselves. He advocated sleeping with the person’s spouse and a slew of things… anything that would trip the watchers up.”

“So you’re saying that’s what another intelligence agency was doing to us by using Herr Obrecht?”

“Possibly… they set up this bullshit story with this banker and they spoon-feed the info to the FBI to throw us off our game. And it almost worked. If Wilson had gotten a toehold, you and I and a lot of other people would be spending a shitload of time with the Feds right now, trying to prove our innocence.”

“If your theory is right,” Kennedy said, “then what’s their endgame? What are they trying to distract us from? And what does a theory Rickman had fifteen years ago have to do with it?”

Rapp grabbed his glass of vodka and took a drink. He thought about the last week and its roller-coaster of emotions. The “oh shit” fear when they’d found out Rick was gone, the horror and panic over the release of the interrogation clip, and the absolute relief many of them had felt when they’d found the camera and learned that Rickman was dead and his secrets were safe. That was the feint, Rapp realized. “You’re not going to want to hear this,” Rapp finally said, looking at Kennedy. “Rick’s not dead. They just wanted us to think he was dead.”

“You have no proof… it’s just your gut!”

“I told you already. I didn’t buy the idea that the same people who hit the safe house could have accidentally killed Rick and then conveniently left behind that camera for us to find.”

For Kennedy it was a frightening proposition. “This is all conjecture.”

“You feel comfortable not acting on it?”

She thought about that for a long time. “No, I don’t.”

“Then I’d better get my butt to Zurich ASAP.”

“Are you up to it?”

“I feel fine.”

Kennedy looked at Lewis for his opinion. “Just don’t hit your head,” the doctor warned Rapp.

“Zurich’s a safe city. I’ll be fine.” Looking back to Kennedy he asked, “Surveillance?”

“I have a team in place.”

“How aggressive?”

“Not… I don’t want to spook him.”

“Good.”

Kennedy glanced at Hurley. “You up for the trip?”

“Let me see. I can either stay here and listen to my oncologist try to talk me into taking rat poison or I can go to Switzerland and beat the shit out of some banker. Tough call.”

“Stan,” Kennedy said in a tone that showed she was not amused.

“Of course I’ll go.”

“Good.” Turning her attention back to Rapp she said, “One more thing. I want you to talk to Gould before you leave.”

Rapp was caught off guard. “Why?”

“He knows something about Obrecht and I think he’s holding back.”

“And you think he’s going to open up to me?” Rapp suddenly looked agitated. “I don’t have time for this. I need to get my team in the air ASAP.”

“Your team is already assembled… well, mostly assembled. Scott is handling something for me, but he’ll be there by the time you’re ready to take off.”

Rapp frowned. “You spun up my team without talking to me?”

“I know this hard for you to grasp at times, but I’m in charge.”

Rapp didn’t want to be in the same room with Gould. “So you’re ordering me to talk to him?”

“That’s right.” Kennedy slid a file across the table. “Read through this quickly and then go down stairs and find out what he knows about Obrecht. There’s also a USB stick in there. It has some surveillance footage Gould took of the area by the veterinary clinic right before the assault. I think you will find it interesting. You and Stan should watch it together.”

Rapp didn’t care about the file or the footage. “How rough can I get?”

Kennedy inhaled sharply and thought about it. “Use your judgment.”

“And if I decide to kill him?”

Rapp’s dark eyes gave Kennedy an unsettling feeling. He was her friend and at times it was easy to forget that at his core he was a killer. She cleared her throat and said, “I don’t want you to kill him.”

“Why?”

“For reasons that I can’t explain right now. You’ll have to trust me.”

“Reasons you won’t explain, you mean.”

“However you’d like to take it, but it is worth reminding you two,” Kennedy said, pointing at Rapp and then Hurley, “that you’re not in charge. I’m calling the shots, and for now I say he lives. Are we clear?”

Rapp wasn’t even sure he wanted to kill the man. His emotions were all over the board when it came to Gould and his wife and child. There’d been only a handful of times where he’d castigated himself for not killing Gould when he had the chance. It was Anna’s memory that had kept him from doing it and he had come to terms with that strange twist of fate. That decision had been made with the naive assumption that Gould would retire and take care of his family. Learning that the reckless idiot had squandered his chance at a second life had Rapp second-guessing his decision. Kennedy might be his boss, but Gould owed Rapp his life. When the time is right, Rapp thought, I’ll be the one to decide if he lives or dies.

Rapp leaned back and crossed his legs. “For now, I’ll do it your way.”

“Good. Something that’s not in the file… I placed Claudia and Anna in protective custody.”

Rapp got that faraway look in his eyes. “Where were they?”

“New Zealand.”

“How’d you find them?”

“She and I have stayed in touch.”

Rapp was surprised and then he realized he shouldn’t have been. Kennedy was thorough. “How old is the girl?”

“Anna is three.”

The fact that the mother had named her after Rapp’s deceased wife had screwed up Rapp’s thinking in ways he could have never predicted. He had spent months tracking Gould and his wife down, with the absolute conviction that when he found them he would kill both of them without hesitation, and then when the moment finally came, and he confronted the mother and the baby girl, it all fell apart. It was as if his wife’s soul had seized him and told him killing them would serve no purpose other than to orphan the baby girl. For a man who had spent more than fifteen years killing people it was the most foreign sensation imaginable.

“Gould had been hiding from Claudia the fact that he was still in the game,” Kennedy said. “He’s trying to act like he doesn’t care, but deep down he’s scared to death that she’s going to leave him once she finds out. It will be your best source of leverage with him.”

Rapp nodded but was thinking of his own ways to exert leverage. A gun to the fool’s head just might be the simplest course of action. The only problem with that tactic, Rapp knew, was that once he got started he might not be able to control himself.