The Last Man

by Vince Flynn

  The embassy in Islamabad reported that the ISI had stepped up their surveillance around the embassy and they were almost certain to have photographed the assets entering the embassy. It was only a matter of time before an official protest was filed and the Pakistanis started tossing Americans out of their country. On top of that, Kennedy would still have to deal with the fools who had ignored their handlers and fled to the embassy seeking asylum. The Pakistani government would demand that those individuals be turned over, and considering the current climate, Kennedy would be left with little alternative. How many of them would live was impossible to guess, but they would all be brutally tortured. And this was just Pakistan. The deputy director of the Clandestine Service and his staff had just delivered a devastating report.

  Thirteen assets, not counting the five in Pakistan, had jumped the reservation. Five had landed on the doorsteps of American embassies throughout Europe, and their handlers were working feverishly to get them to return to their lives before anyone noticed, but so far none of them were willing. Of the remaining eight, they had no idea if they’d been arrested or were making a run for the nearest border and the safety of America. Kennedy’s network of spies was crumbling with each tick of the clock, and they were only in the infancy of this crisis. She wondered how many of these brave individuals understood what she knew, that Rickman had only just begun telling secrets. The video was just the first installment of a plague that would cripple the CIA.

  As she looked at the faces around the conference table, and the ones on the large screen relaying the image from Langley, she wondered how many of these people understood what was at stake. They were all smart, or they wouldn’t have risen to such important posts, but there was a learning curve during a catastrophe. It was extremely easy to be myopic. There were specific tasks that needed to be performed and more than a few people were afraid to look up and see just how bad things could get. Kennedy couldn’t afford to bury her head in a bunch of files. It was her job to steer this ship away from the shoals, and right now she was beginning to wonder if it was possible.

  “You okay?”

  Kennedy turned to look at Rapp, who was studying her with his dark eyes. There were times, like now, when that gaze unnerved her. She swore he could look into a person’s soul and smell fear.

  Proving her point, he said, “I know this looks hopeless right now, but we’ll catch a break sooner or later.”

  “I wish I shared your confidence.”

  He leaned in even closer. “Right now it’s all about damage control. The bleeding will eventually stop, and when it does, we’re just going to have to bust our butt to get back in the game.”

  Right now Kennedy didn’t feel like the bleeding would ever stop, and if it did, she wasn’t so sure she would have a job. Looking at Rapp, it occurred to her that she still hadn’t talked to him about Gould. There were obviously still some memory issues or she was pretty certain he would have brought it up. More than likely he would have demanded to see him. Maybe she could ask Coleman to go over it with him before Dr. Lewis arrived in the morning. At least Gould was cooperating. Nash was meticulously rebuilding the last four years of the man’s life, with special attention paid to his financial transactions and employers. Kennedy found it hard to swallow that it had been purely coincidental that Gould had been hired for the second time in four years to kill Rapp. And then there was Wilson. The Clandestine Service was by necessity an organization staffed with people who were the opposite of Dudley Do-Right. Rapp had done plenty of business with banks specializing in secrecy, from Switzerland to Cyprus, to Gibraltar, and all the way to Singapore, all of it authorized by Kennedy. The question was, how did Wilson find out, and who had wanted him to find out?

  The door to the conference room was yanked open and Sydney Hayek entered, out of breath and carrying a laptop. Kennedy’s assistant, Eugene, was on her heels.

  “I’m sorry to barge in like this,” Hayek announced, “but I found something that I thought you’d all want to see immediately.” Hayek followed Eugene to a console full of electronics at the far end of the room. She handed him the laptop and he connected several cables and then switched one of the flat-screen monitors over to the laptop feed. Eugene handed her a remote and left the room, closing the soundproof door on his way out. Even though he was Kennedy’s personal assistant, he knew he didn’t have the clearance to see everything.

  Hayek took a brief moment to gather herself, looking around the table at Kennedy, Rapp, Schneeman, and Nash, and then at the larger gathering on the screen. “You’re all aware of the house we found in Jalalabad. It turns out we have a DNA match for Joe Rickman.”

  “I heard that room was a mess,” Nash said. “How sure are you that it’s a match?”

  Hayek rocked her head from side to side, not sure where she should begin, so she just started. “I’m one hundred percent sure. The DNA match is ninety-nine-point-nine percent, but we have other evidence.” She looked at Kennedy. “There was a camcorder in the basement. It was smashed and the memory card was missing. This type of camera, however, also has an internal flash drive.” The questions started in earnest, but she raised her voice and her hands and talked over everyone. “I want to caution everyone that this is extremely graphic. There are at least two hours of footage and we will be analyzing it for months to come, but I wanted to show you one thing that everyone needs to see before we get into the rest of it.”

  Hayek hit the Play button and started the video. The flat-screen showed the same image as the one that had gone viral. A bloodied, battered, and shirtless Rickman hung from the ceiling, his hands stretched above his head. His torso was covered with red welts. Both eyes were swollen shut and, from the unnatural angle of his mouth, it looked like his jaw was broken. The two men were beating him senseless, taking turns so they could conserve their energy. As the video continued, they began striking him in the groin with rubber hoses, and then Rickman’s body convulsed and he coughed up a glob of blood. The hooded men continued their onslaught for another dozen seconds and then seemed to sense that something was wrong.

  They stopped hitting Rickman and lifted his swollen chin. As soon as the shorter man let go of Rickman’s chin his head dropped lifelessly to rest on his chest. The two men began arguing in Pashto and then they pulled their masks up to reveal their faces. It was obvious they were panicked while they started to check for a pulse. A third man entered the picture, a blur as he passed the camera. He ignored the two men and put his fingers to Rickman’s neck. It seemed like an eternity as the man continued to search for a pulse, going back and forth between Rickman’s neck and his wrists. Eventually the man placed an ear over Rickman’s bloody chest. After what seemed like an eternity, he stepped away from Rickman and the two men began to defend themselves.

  The third man began screaming at them and then pulled a pistol. There was more arguing and then the third man, who still had his mask on, started pumping rounds into the taller of the two men. When he was done with him he turned the pistol on the other man and kept firing until his pistol was empty. The man then turned, marched straight for the camera, swung at it with his pistol, and the screen went black.

  There was nothing but stunned silence. Kennedy’s mind was trying to process what she had just seen, torn between horror and sadness and relief and a deep personal revulsion over the fact that she was comforted by the knowledge that one of her top people was dead. In a matter of seconds her mind ran the gamut, processing the violence, the tragedy, and the calculation that while Joe Rickman’s final days on this planet were as awful as one could imagine, he had been spared months of cruel, unthinkable torture. There was a rationalization at work—one man was dead, but countless others would avoid the gallows. With a wave of relief, Kennedy realized her network of spies was safe, and in the same time and space she hated herself for coming to that conclusion without mourning for Rickman.

  CHAPTER 42

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  JOEL Wilson didn’t have the energy or th
e desire to take his dog for a walk, but it was part of the plan, so he slid on a pair of tennis shoes and grabbed his barn jacket from the front hall closet. His wife, a skinny little platinum blonde who was a fitness freak, walked the dog both before and after work, so when Wilson grabbed the leash the dog cocked his head to one side as if to say, Are you kidding me?

  “I don’t need any attitude from you. I’ve got enough shit going on.”

  “What was that, honey?”

  “Nothing,” Wilson called to his wife, who was down the hall working on the computer. “I’m going to take Rose for a walk.”

  “Really?” Sally Wilson appeared in the doorway of the study, a pair of black reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.

  “I know it’s not usually my thing, but I need to clear my mind.”

  “Is it that bad?” Sally worked at the Department of Energy and had a good sense of just how nasty office politics could get in the big bureaucracy of Washington.

  I’m about to find out, Wilson thought to himself. “It’s pretty bad, but it’s not over by a long shot. Just because crazy old Hargrave is mad at me doesn’t mean he’s right.”

  She came down the hall and kissed him on the cheek. “You’ll figure it out. You always do. You’re the smartest, best man I know.”

  Wilson blushed. He loved her dearly. Most marriages that couldn’t produce children ended up in the ditch. Theirs had grown stronger. They were a great team. “Thank you, honey. I love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Their two-story brownstone was in a new development sandwiched between Reagan National Airport and the Pentagon. An old industrial park had been bulldozed and the developer had created a neighborhood that was supposed to give the feel of historic Georgetown. This had been accomplished by building four different types of brownstones that were basically the same in terms of the foundation and mechanicals, but slightly different in floor plans and the color of shutters and front doors. It was a nice neighborhood filled with lobbyists and upper-middle government types.

  Wilson let the cocker spaniel take the lead. To say that he was a little down would have been an understatement. The long flight back from Afghanistan had given him way too much time to think. Even the members of his own team avoided talking to him. It was almost as if they all realized he’d become toxic. He’d tried to come up with an excuse for why they had to pack up all their stuff after having landed two days earlier. They had been operating under the assumption that they were going to be in the country for at least a week and that then the bulk of the team would return to Washington, leaving a few agents behind to follow up on things. But in the mad dash to get everyone up and packed, there was no way for him to massage what was going on. Before the flight was off the ground the entire team had heard about Cal Patterson’s alarming phone call from Executive Assistant Director Hargrave.

  None of the team knew Hargrave the way Wilson did. They saw him as a serious man with an important title who could banish them to whatever post he liked. Wilson knew the man for the phony he was, but trying to convince his team would only make things worse.

  Two blocks away from the house, under a streetlight, he stopped and looked for the car. The dog turned around, gave him a What are you doing? look, and then tried to get him to keep moving. “Stay put, you stupid mutt,” Wilson hissed.

  A block away a pair of headlights snapped on and the vehicle started moving Wilson’s way. When the black Lincoln Town Car stopped, the only thing Wilson could see was his reflection in the tinted windows. A click announced that the power locks had been tripped. Wilson opened the rear passenger door and looked into the dark back seat.

  “Get in.”

  Wilson picked up the dog and climbed into the backseat. He set Rose on his lap and closed the door. The vehicle started moving and the privacy glass between the front and back seats was raised.

  “Good-looking dog. What’s his name?”

  “Rose, and he’s a she.”

  Senator Carl Ferris reached out and allowed the dog to lick his liver-spotted hand. “I love dogs. Did you know that?”

  “Nope.” Wilson couldn’t give a shit.

  “I’ve had them my whole life. Three of them right now. Two of them stay at the big house up in Connecticut. The other one travels with us. A little cockapoo. Cutest thing you’ve ever seen.”

  Wilson watched as the senator went to work scratching Rose’s neck and talking to her in that stupid baby-talk voice that his wife used when she thought she and the dog were carrying on a conversation.

  “I’m really glad you’re so interested in my dog, but I’ve got bigger problems right now.”

  Ferris kept scratching the dog. “Yes, you do. Very unfortunate, the way Samuel behaved. The man is extremely petulant.”

  “The word I would use is asshole.”

  Ferris pulled the dog onto his lap. “Just how serious are things?”

  “Pretty bad. I’m supposed to be in the director’s office at 11:00 a.m. sharp tomorrow morning. I have no idea who is going to be there, but you can bet Hargrave has the deck stacked against me. I’ve kept him out of the loop, just as you advised me, and now he’s going to use that against me, and trust me, it isn’t going to be good. They take this shit very seriously at the FBI. I wish I had just let him in on what I was doing.”

  “That would have been a huge mistake.” Ferris was a portly man with a slight comb-over. “He would have run to Kennedy and you would have never gotten your investigation off the ground.”

  “What does it matter? They’re going to pull the rug out from under me tomorrow. They’re going to transfer my ass to the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity or some other BS post. Shit, I’ll be lucky if I have a job when they’re done.”

  “Now . . . now,” Ferris said in a caring voice. “You need to gather yourself and remember that while you may have stepped on a few toes, you’re still right. You have uncovered a massive fraud. Millions of dollars in funds that have been stolen by a corrupt and out-of-control CIA.”

  “You don’t need to convince me, it’s them—my bosses.”

  “Hargrave, really. Director Miller would stand behind you if things weren’t already so muddied.”

  “So you think I’m screwed.”

  “I didn’t say that. I think you’re in a tough spot, but I’ve seen worse.” Ferris shifted the dog and said, “The key is for you to state your case tomorrow. You have the affidavit from the banker. You have the bank records. I don’t know how they can ignore that kind of information.”

  “For starters, they’re going to want to know how I came by all of this evidence, and they are not going to like my answers. This is the CIA we’re talking about.”

  “I understand that,” Ferris said with a trace of impatience. “Evidence is evidence. It will simply have to see the light of day. People will understand just how serious things are then.”

  Wilson cocked his head to the side and said, “Are you suggesting that I leak this information to the press, because if you are, I’ll be the one to have my ass thrown in jail.”

  “Calm down,” Ferris said sternly. “I said no such thing. I know you have certain rules you must follow. The key is for you to get them to see that by not letting you proceed, it will open the FBI up to allegations of a cover-up.”

  Wilson liked the sound of that. That was the kind of thing that could scare the crap out of any high-level bureaucrat. “You know if I dropped your name and mentioned that the Judiciary Committee was keeping an eye on this it might be enough to get them to back off.”

  The senator’s expression soured. “For now you need to minimize our relationship. Trust me on this. We haven’t reached the point yet where I’m ready to get involved, but I promise you, when the time is right, I will jump on them like an eight-hundred-pound gorilla.”

  “And until then I’m just going to get my ass kicked.”

  Ferris sighed. “Don’t be so melodramatic. It’s very unbecoming in a man who carries a badge a
nd a gun.”

  CHAPTER 43

  ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN

  GENERAL Durrani was sitting in the rear passenger seat of his armored Mercedes sedan. Two identical black Mercedes E350 sedans followed. The cars were indistinguishable from one another, and tinted windows made it impossible to see who was inside the vehicles. Durrani preferred that his car take the lead, as bombers more often than not assumed their target was in the middle sedan. Truth be known, however, Durrani didn’t worry much about being blown up. The people who did that type of stuff, the militants, were all in his back pocket.

  The motorcade pulled up to the main security post of his gated community, Bahria Town, on the outskirts of Islamabad. Durrani had helped the developer get his forty-five-thousand-acre gated community off the ground—evicting tenants and intimidating reluctant landowners into selling. In addition to making sure the right people were bribed or threatened, Durrani had also made sure that the private security force was composed of former army personnel who were entirely loyal to him. In exchange for his help, he was given his own compound, nestled on a very private palm-tree-lined lot. The compound was surrounded by ten-foot walls that protected an eight-thousand-square-foot main house, two guesthouses, a pool house, and an eight-car garage with rooms for his servants and bodyguards. Durrani was filled with a sense of bliss every time he entered the gated community. Only in his beloved Pakistan could you work this hard and be rewarded with such opulence.