Separation of Power

by Vince Flynn

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

  Milan, Thursday evening

  The flat was very nice. It was tastefully decorated with the perfect mix of antiques and modern amenities. The walls were covered with original paintings by artists that Rosenthal did not know. Nor did he care to know. It was all irrelevant shit to him. He'd been sitting in the dark now for over two hours waiting for the woman to return, and he was growing impatient. Sunberg was positioned across the room from him on the living room couch. Yanta was out on the street in the rental car following the target.

  The file Rosenthal had received from Freidman said nothing about a security system, but Rosenthal had learned the hard way that the files were rarely as up-to-date as they should be. So instead of picking the lock and running the risk of getting caught in the hallway, and possibly setting off an alarm, Rosenthal went in search of the caretaker's flat in the basement. He asked the seventy-six-year-old man if there were any available units in the building. The old man told him that there weren't any at present, but he expected one to open up after the first of the year.

  Rosenthal told the caretaker that he was in town from Rome, and would be moving to Milan in February. He then pulled out a wad of money and said he was willing to put down a cash deposit today if the unit was acceptable. The caretaker leapt at the opportunity to rent the flat after one showing, and the two men ascended to the top floor of the building.

  While they were upstairs poking around, Jordan Sunberg picked his way into the caretaker's flat and found the file on Donatella Rahn. Fortunately there was no security system, and even more fortunately there were three copies of the key to her flat. Sunberg checked the other hooks. Some of the flats had four copies and others had only two. There appeared to be no system, but just to make sure, Sunberg found a drawer filled with spare keys and grabbed one. He then took one of the keys to Donatella's apartment and replaced it with the one from the drawer. After checking to make sure he didn't disturb anything that might be noticed, he left the caretakers flat and waited down the street for Rosenthal.

  For his part, Rosenthal gave the old man the cash deposit and told him he would stop by the next morning to fill out the paperwork. He of course would not be returning, and he hoped if the police came around asking questions the old man would say nothing of his visit for fear of having to turn the cash over as evidence. Either way, he wasn't worried. Rosenthal and his team would be out of the country by midmorning, and he doubted any description given by the old caretaker would be detailed enough to give him real problems. In Rosenthal's opinion it was a gamble well worth taking.

  Israel, because it was a country surrounded by enemies, had little compunction when it came to using assassination as a means to secure the foundling country's interests. During the country's brief existence they'd had some fantastic successes and some horrible failures. The successes were not always publicized. Rosenthal knew that better than anyone. Some of his best work had never been noticed by anyone other than the most senior Mossad officials. Rosenthal was determined to keep it that way.

  He told himself to be patient, despite the fact that just minutes before Yanta had radioed that the target and her date had left the bar and were walking in their direction. Everything looked like it was going well and then Yanta lost them when they entered the park. He'd driven around to the other side and was waiting for them to emerge.

  The blackout gave Rosenthal time to think through several contingencies. If she invited her date up for a drink, or by the looks of what he'd found in her nightstand, more than a drink, it would be the man's unlucky, not lucky night. Rosenthal had no compunction in killing an innocent bystander. There were those in his profession who would argue with him, but very few of them had shared his success. If she did not come home tonight, if this man lived nearby and they were walking to his place, he would have to consider hitting her on the street in the morning. There would be some increased risk in killing her in the open, but it wasn't that difficult. He'd done it before. Walk up behind her, move to pass her on the left side, place the silencer against her back and fire three times. Keep walking and never look back. The gun would be exposed for no more than two seconds. The impact of the bullets would knock the wind from her, she'd be incapable of screaming and her heart would stop beating before she hit the ground.

  Rosenthal looked at his watch. Freidman had been very specific that this had to be taken care of quickly. He was tempted to leave the apartment and go find them. Take care of it right now and get out of the country. It was dark; there'd be few witnesses if any. It just might be worth it. As he was mulling it over, his earpiece crackled with the voice of Yanta.

  "They've just come out of the park and are headed your way."

  "Roger," whispered Rosenthal. "Can you get ahead of them and watch the street in front of the flat?"

  "Yeah, but I'll have to lose sight of them for a block."

  Rosenthal weighed the risk, and decided it was almost certain that they were headed back to her flat. "Go ahead and break contact. Get into a position where you can see them coming and watch the front of the flat."

  "Roger, I'm on my way."

  Rosenthal looked across the room at Sunberg and nodded. The two men stood and stretched. "Are you ready?"

  "Yep," answered Sunberg.

  Rosenthal had gone over the plan with him three times. It wasn't complicated. They were at opposite ends of the living room, their fire directed at diagonal angles where their target would enter the room. The lights were off, just as they'd found them. "Remember, wait for her to enter the room, and then we take her."

  rapp was right; Donatella avoided the elevator and took the stairs. And true to her profession, she never went anywhere without a weapon. Donatella chose her handguns like most women chose handbags, different ones for different occasions. Her pistol of choice was the Beretta 92F 9-mm, but fully loaded the weapon was too large and heavy to carry around in a purse. For everyday use she carried the Walther PPK with a silencer. The weapon was light, only 20 ounces, and short. Its one drawback was a lack of stopping power. It fired the small.22 caliber round, which wasn't going to knock anybody down with a body shot, but as long as you hit them in the head it didn't make any difference. And Donatella rarely missed what she was aiming for.

  As she ascended the staircase she kept the pistol concealed in the folds of her coat. It was cocked and the safety was off. There was no need to check and see if a round was chambered, because she never carried a gun without a round in the chamber. She spoke to Rapp over her mobile phone as she went. At each landing she paused briefly to listen and check the next flight. She had a slight buzz from the two martinis, but the walk home in the crisp night air had helped to awaken her senses. That, and the man sitting in the car down on the street. Rapp didn't have to spell it out for her. Someone didn't like loose ends, and they were willing to keep killing until the trail went cold. There was one other option, and that was why she wasn't telling Rapp what he wanted to know. The U. S. was an ally, but that only went so far.

  The CIA was not beyond lying to get what they wanted, and there could be no doubt that they'd love to find out who her controller was. The man sitting in the car could be someone sent to kill her, or he could just as likely be an employee of the CIA, either sent to kill her or scare her into telling Rapp who had hired her. Maybe that's why Rapp saw the man before she did. Because he knew the man was going to be there. Welcome to the paranoid world of spying.

  By the time she reached the fourth floor she'd hung up on Rapp, and she'd made up her mind. If anyone was waiting for her in her flat they were fair game. She'd go in shooting. She stood silently in the shadows of the open stairwell for a few moments, patiently searching for a sign that someone was waiting for her. She put the cell phone away and for a second thought of taking her boots off so she could make it down the hall without noise. Then she realized if anyone was in her flat they would have already been alerted by the man on the street.

  Donatella took off her coat a
nd retrieved a knife and her keys from her purse. She threw her coat over her shoulder and started down the hall. When she reached the door to her flat she stood off to one side and placed the key in the lock. She turned the key and pushed in the door. The four-panel door swung open by itself while she stayed in the hallway protected by the heavy doorframe. With one eye peeking into the narrow foyer, she looked at the credenza on the right to see if anything had been disturbed. The three framed photos and the flower arrangement were as she'd left them.

  She reached in and turned the light on and then before stepping into the narrow foyer, she peered through the crack where the door was connected to the frame to make sure no one was waiting behind it. It was clear. She entered her flat, the heels of her boots announcing very clearly that it was a woman. She paused for a moment and then reached out with a second key and locked the closet on her left. Clearing closets was a two person job, and even then it was a good way to get killed. She set the keys down on the credenza along with her purse, and then with a deep breath to steel herself, she walked toward her living room as casually as her nerves would allow.

  Her pistol was up and level in her right hand, and the knife was in her left, reversed so the blade was hidden against her forearm. Even now just several feet from the end of the foyer she could see no more than half of the rectangular shaped room. All four corners were hidden from her sight. If she were waiting in someone's apartment she knew exactly where she'd be positioned. With her left hand she flipped the switch up and the ceiling light and two lamps in the room flickered to life.

  Donatella paused briefly, listening for the sound of movement, her gun pointed where she thought her assassin might come from, but there was nothing. Pulling her coat from her shoulder, she swung it underhand and launched it into the room where it landed on the arm of the couch just to the left. Like a gymnast, Donatella followed the jacket into the room with a diving forward somersault. In midair she heard the telltale sound of a subsonic round leaving the end of a silencer. It had come from the direction she'd anticipated. In the split second it took for her to hit the ground she knew the assassin had missed. Donatella rolled forward between the couch and a chair and sprang to her knees. Her silenced Walther was up and rapidly moving toward the source of the shot.

  Before she'd come to a stop she found her target and fired a single well aimed shot. The only thing she noticed about the man was his dark hair and his gun coming to bear on her. Up on one knee, Donatella spun to her right as her eye caught some motion, and moved her arm quickly to acquire a second target. Before she could get off a shot she felt the stinging impact of a bullet slamming into her right shoulder. The shot knocked her off-balance and she started to fall. In slow motion she watched her gun drop from her unresponsive fingers, and, then she felt something slice through her hair.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

  Rapp rounded the last corner and instead of taking a hard right and coming up directly behind the car, he crossed over to the other side of the street. He was breathing hard from the sprint but ignored the pain. He was too close to getting the answer he desperately needed. Rapp saw the car up ahead on his right as he ran down the sidewalk in a slight crouch. His eyes scanned the parked cars and sidewalk for any signs of trouble. There was no turning back.

  He was close now. He kept his eye on the car at the next corner and then slowed enough to cut in between two parked vehicles. He darted out into the street at the perfect place. He was in the car's blind spot, moving toward it quickly. Rapp drew his gun with his left hand and took aim. With ten feet to go he squeezed the trigger.

  The bullet leaving the thick black silencer barely made a noise, and the safety glass window breaking on the driver's side wasn't much louder. At least from the exterior of the car, but from the inside it was considerably louder. The man sitting behind the wheel jerked spastically in reaction to the shattered glass. His arms flew up in a vain attempt to stop the thousands of broken pieces from hitting him.

  Rapp was now at the window. It had taken less than a second for him to fire the shot and get to the door. The man's hands were up shielding his face, and the glass was still tumbling from his lap to the floor of the car. Rapp reached in with his right hand and grabbed the mans wrist. Rapp's pistol was still in his left hand and he reached in to smack the man with the butt end of the grip. He aimed for the man's temple. Just before the hard metal made contact the man yelled, and then his body went limp from the sharp blow.

  Quickly, Rapp unlocked the door and opened it. He immediately removed the man's gun from his hip holster, and threw it into the backseat as he continued his search. While looking for a backup weapon it occurred to him that he'd almost missed something. He'd been breathing so hard, and the adrenaline was coursing through his veins so fast, that it didn't register what the man had yelled, and more importantly, what language he had yelled it in. The man had sworn in Hebrew.

  rosenthal's pistol was trained on the woman. He slowly approached her from his corner of the room. She was on her butt, her body limp and leaning against the side of the chair. Her pistol was a good eight feet away sitting in the middle of the hardwood floor. Rosenthal was pretty sure she was dead. He'd hit her once in the shoulder and then in the head. He'd put one more in her just to make sure.

  With his gun still aimed at her he called for his partner through clenched lips, " Jordan." There was no answer. " Jordan, can you hear me? Are you all right?"

  Rosenthal tried to make sense of what had just happened. How had she known they were waiting for her? What had he done wrong? How would he explain to the colonel that he had lost Jordan Sunberg? Rosenthal was pondering these questions when out of nowhere came a loud noise over his earpiece and then the voice ofdavidyanta swearing in Hebrew. Rosenthal stopped dead in his tracks. Yanta was a professional, and knew that under no circumstances were they ever to speak in their native tongue while on a mission. For him to make such a mistake someone had to have surprised him. Rosenthal had lost one man and maybe two. He was jolted by the horrible sinking feeling of going from the hunter to the hunted in just seconds. With one hand on his lip mike and the other holding his gun he began to call in earnest for Yanta to check in.

  donatella HAD landed on her butt. She was leaning against the chair with one of her legs bent under her. Her shoulder hadn't begun to throb yet. It was too early for that, but she felt a stinging sensation on the back of her scalp. One of the shots must have grazed her. Her head was tilted down, her chin resting on her chest. She looked dead, or at the least, unconscious. She didn't dare move, not without her pistol. The man would have to come closer.

  With her hair hanging down in front of her face she cracked her eyes ever so slightly. She looked for her Walther, but it was nowhere in sight. She heard the man's steps as he approached her. She'd have to act dead. Donatella tried to discern if there were any more of them. The man called out someone's name, but there was no response. That must have been the one she'd killed with the head shot.

  Donatella took a quick inventory of her body. Her right arm was useless, but she still had both her legs and her left hand, which was thankfully still holding onto the knife. The man would not be able to see the weapon since she held the blade flat against her forearm.

  The man took another step forward. "David, come in. Can you hear me?"

  He was checking with his partner on the street. That was good; he was distracted. The shoes came another step closer and the man was standing right in front of her. Through her hair she could see the gun that was pointed at her head. Donatella knew what she had to do. She jerked her head away from the gun and brought her left hand up at the same time. The razor sharp blade sliced through the flesh and tendons of the man's wrist. The silenced gun thudded to the floor before a shot could be fired.

  Donatella's next move was a vicious kick that just barely caught the man's groin, but nonetheless sent him retreating across the room. In that fleeting moment Donatella abandoned the knife and lunged for the man's gun. The man rea
lized his mistake and stopped his retreat. With his life in the balance, he stepped forward and dove for the gun. Donatella beat him to it by less than a second. She grabbed the gun with her left hand just as he landed on top of her. The force of him hitting her sent them skidding across the hardwood floor. It was her good arm against his good arm.

  Donatella wrestled to get free and Rosenthal struggled to keep her down. She was on her back, and he was on top of her. He was stronger and had the leverage. The gun started to move closer to Donatella's head. Her brain sent signals to her wounded right arm to do something. With incredible effort it began to twitch. Donatella felt herself losing her grip on the pistol and she lashed out. The man's head was just above her. She opened her mouth wide, lifted her head off the floor and bit down as hard as she could. After just a second she could taste the warm salty blood of the man's right ear dripping into her mouth. The man growled in pain, but did not release his grip. Donatella kept her jaw locked and started shaking her head violently. In her teeth she could feel the ear tearing away from the mans head. His groan turned into an all out scream, but his grip stayed firm.

  The thought occurred to Donatella again that she was going to die, that this man was too tough for her. It was this feeling of absolute desperation that caused her right arm to move, and when it did it bumped into a familiar object. Donatella closed her eyes, as her fingertips searched the familiar shape. After what seemed like an eternity she had it in her hand. With agonizing pain she picked it up and released her bite on the mans ear.