by Vince Flynn
“I think I see it,” the Frenchman said, his whisper echoing through the narrow space. “Twenty meters.”
Rapp’s grip on his Glock tightened as they continued forward to a steel wall covered in surface rust. They found a keypad similar to the one at the tunnel’s entrance and Gould punched in another lengthy code. There was a moment of tense silence followed by the hum of an electric motor.
Rapp lowered the night-vision goggle mounted to his helmet and flipped it on. The next-generation system combined the light amplification of traditional starlight scopes with thermal imaging. Normally, he’d have refused it due to the bulk and weight, but there were enough unknowns about the basement they were about to enter to make it worthwhile. Tests at the Farm suggested the unit would give him a solid view of the ambient environment while highlighting the body heat of human targets.
“You ready, Mitch?”
“Go.”
Gould shoved the steel barrier outward and threw himself to the dirt floor on the other side. He rolled smoothly to the right while Rapp went left as planned.
The light amplification capability of the goggle was barely functional due to the depth of the darkness. Thermal picked up a little temperature variation, but other than Gould glowing orange, most everything just read as hazy shades of green. Rapp had to move far slower than he would have liked, avoiding the unidentifiable clutter on his way to an overturned barrel. Gould nearly tripped, but managed to save it and take cover behind something that looked vaguely like an ancient winepress. Rapp spotted a reddish smear at the edge of his peripheral vision but didn’t bother tracking it. Most likely a rat.
Other than that, nothing. No sound. No movement. In fact, nothing that would suggest anyone had been down there in years. Rapp swept his gun over a dark hole in the wall that he guessed was a -medieval well and then slipped around the left side of the barrel. He motioned Gould forward and the Frenchman moved cautiously to a low pile of rubble. They leapfrogged that way, moving purposefully until they found themselves at the base of the staircase that led up to the main house.
Gould pointed right to a rectangle in the wall that their goggles shaded blue. The cold steel of the entrance to Obrecht’s safe room.
Rapp covered the Frenchman as he ran to it and smeared a bead of epoxy into the narrow gap between the edge of the door and the jamb. Not exactly high-tech, but it would be enough to keep the Swiss banker from gaining access should things go south. Obrecht’s only option at that point would be the tunnel, where he would flee right into the welcoming arms of Joe Maslick.
Gould returned and led up the stairs with Rapp a few steps behind. They retracted their goggles and removed their helmets when the light bleeding around the basement door became strong enough for them to see. Rapp stowed the helmets beneath a stack of stained towels on the landing while the Frenchman slid a fiber-optic cable beneath the door. The image from the tiny camera read out on his phone, displaying -exactly what they’d hoped to see: an empty hallway.
Rapp activated his throat mike and spoke quietly. “We’re exiting the basement onto the first floor. Stan, give me a sitrep.”
No response.
It was one of the unavoidable drawbacks to their plan. His silence could mean that he was dead and that they were walking into an ambush, or it could mean that he was with Obrecht and not in a position to respond.
“Scott. Update.”
“Stan got called in to meet with Obrecht while you were offline. No communication from him since. We’re in position and ready to go.”
“Roger that. Stan, if you can hear this and you’re in Obrecht’s office, try to toggle your mike.”
He waited for a moment and then the banker’s accented voice came over his earpiece.
“I’ve had my people check on this, and I can assure you that my bank does no—”
The feed went dead and Rapp gave Gould a thumbs-up. Hurley was where he was supposed to be, but couldn’t communicate beyond briefly pressing the button on his key fob.
Gould eased the door open and slipped through with Rapp following. The main staircase was to their left, but it was the centerpiece of the mansion’s entry hall and in full view of no fewer than six windows. They went right, skirting the kitchen and entering a narrow servant’s staircase. Gould aimed his Glock upward as they ascended, with Rapp keeping an eye on their flank.
When they came to the door at the top, Gould did another quick search with the fiber-optic camera and then went through. They were halfway up the wide hallway when they heard a woman’s voice singing quietly. The two men ducked into a bedroom and pressed their backs against the wall behind the half-open door.
Of all the rooms in the mansion she could have chosen to clean that day, she picked that one.
Rapp grabbed Gould’s wrist when the assassin aimed his silenced pistol at the back of her head. While the proliferation of surveillance cameras throughout the world was a serious drawback for men in their profession, the invention of the iPod almost made up for it. Rapp spotted the ubiquitous white earphones and motioned toward the hallway. She never noticed the two armed men slipping out of the room only a few feet behind her, concentrating instead on the sheets she was unfolding and the latest dance track from Madonna.
They were able to pick up their pace on the thick carpet and it took only seconds to reach the second-to-last door on the right. According to Gould, Leo Obrecht’s office was just beyond.
Rapp put an ear to the wall, but it was too thick to hear anything inside. Hopefully, they’d find Obrecht and Hurley having a pleasant conversation over tea. A set of flex cuffs and some duct tape would be all it would take to get their package ready to go back through the tunnel. Next stop, a CIA black site in Bulgaria.
Rapp put a hand on the knob and nodded a silent three count. He didn’t throw open the door like he normally would, instead pushing it gently enough that Obrecht wouldn’t get spooked if he saw it.
Luck was with them. They slipped inside the study unnoticed, the book-lined walls and tapestries absorbing what little sound they made. At the far side, a heavyset man with his back to them was poking at the embers in a massive stone fireplace. A modern steel sculpture partially obscured both him and a portion of the right side of the room, but not enough that Rapp couldn’t immediately determine that Hurley wasn’t there.
The man at the fireplace was the size Rapp expected from the surveillance photos and he had the right expensive suit and short-cropped gray hair, but there was something about him that seemed off. The barely perceptible athleticism in the way he stood. The effortless way he handled the heavy iron poker.
Rapp spun toward Gould, but was just a fraction of a second too slow. The Frenchman swept a foot low, taking Rapp’s legs out from under him. He hit the carpet rolling just as the man near the fireplace spun around to reveal the MP5 in his free hand. The sculpture obscured his head, but Rapp resisted the urge to go for a body shot. He knew instinctively that the man’s bulk was the result of full body armor. It was a perfect way to imitate an overweight banker while making him impervious to small arms fire. There was a weakness in the mercenary’s preparations, though: his expensive Italian shoes.
Rapp fired a round into the left one and used his momentum to swing his Glock toward Gould.
“Don’t do it, Mitch!”
The assassin had his own pistol lined up in a two-handed grip. And while Rapp could no longer see the merc behind him, the silence suggested he hadn’t fallen. If he was tough and disciplined enough to stay upright with the ball of his foot missing, it was likely that the MP5 was also on target.
“Drop the weapon, Mitch. And don’t get your hands anywhere near that throat mike.”
Rapp let the Glock fall to the carpet.
“And Stan’s.”
He reached for Hurley’s Kimber Gold Match as he slowly stood.
“You’ve got two guns trained on you, Mitch. And neither one of us are the illiterate goat herders you’re used to. Understand?”
; “There’s no way Obrecht can be paying you enough for this,” Rapp said, retrieving the Kimber and then letting it fall from his hand.
“Fifteen million and a new identity so clean even the CIA won’t be able to track me. But it’s not the money.”
“What then?” Rapp said, though he already knew the answer. The truth was, he always had.
“You’re my only failure, Mitch. I thought I’d forget about it as time went on, but it just got worse.” He eased left to put himself in a position that would allow him to avoid a cross fire if Rapp made a move. “I had you dead to rights in Afghanistan. I can’t believe the idiot who hired me blew it like that.”
“What about your wife and daughter, Louis? How do they fit in with your new identity?”
It took Gould a few seconds to respond. “Seemed like a fair trade. I lose them but I become the man who killed a legend.”
The door opened, but it didn’t even cause a flicker of distraction in Gould. He kept his eyes locked on target as Stan Hurley was pushed through. The old man staggered and nearly fell, holding the back of his head with a blood-soaked hand.
“Stan,” the Frenchman said cheerfully. “You’re just in time to be the icing on my cake.”
CHAPTER 24
ROME
ITALY
KABIR Gadai checked his phone and then laid it back on the table. The screen continued to display Isabella Accorso’s daughter in the crosshairs, as it had for the last forty minutes.
He felt the unaccustomed sensation of nervousness spreading from his stomach to his extremities, producing a barely perceptible tremor in his hands. The life he’d led was one of careful plans rewarded with an uninterrupted string of successes. This situation, though, had been beyond his control from the beginning. It was one thing to trust in God, but another to rely on his intervention. Allah might see this as arrogance and punish those involved.
Bianca Accorso was a young woman with highly predictable habits, and Gadai was confident that she would remain sitting with her friends for precisely another seventeen minutes. Taj was certain that this time wouldn’t expire without her mother bringing the files, but it would be idiocy not to plan for a worst-case scenario.
A quick return to Pakistan would be the most obvious course of action, but he had been serving Taj for too long to think that was a viable option. If he arrived without the Rickman files, it would be the beginning of his own destruction. Not immediately, of course. Taj was too subtle for that. But within the year, he would find himself accused of treason or assassinated by one of the Taliban loyal to Taj.
If Accorso didn’t appear in the next twenty minutes, it seemed almost certain that she had contacted the Italian authorities. Gadai would have no choice but to run. He would never be able to return to his country. He would never see his sons again. His life would become nothing more than an endless procession of days consumed with trying to stay ahead of Taj’s assassins.
His Bluetooth earpiece buzzed and he pressed the button to pick up the call.
“Go ahead.”
“She’s entered the lobby.”
“Any sign of the police?”
“None.”
Gadai let out a relieved breath and walked across the room to the door. There was no denying that as great as the risks were, the rewards were equally great: a position second only to Taj at the helm of the modern era’s first Muslim superpower. He would have a hand in spreading Islam across the globe in a way that had never before been imagined. All while the Americans cowered.
Gadai peered through the peephole, looking across the hallway at room 200. It would be over soon, he reassured himself. Taj had once again been right. While terrifying and unpredictable, he was a great man favored by God.
“She’s exiting the stairway,” the voice said over his earpiece. “Twenty seconds. No other activity.”
Accorso appeared a few moments later with an envelope under her arm. He watched her from behind as she knocked timidly on the door of the empty room.
“Still clear?” he asked.
His men were monitoring the parking lot, the lobby, and all points of entry to the second floor.
“Yes, sir.”
Gadai opened the door. “Isabella.”
She spun, fear and surprise playing out across her face.
“Come in,” he said, keeping his words purposely vague. If she was wearing a wire, the police would assume he was in room 200 instead of being across the hall.
The woman did as she was told and he closed the door behind her.
“Have you brought me what I asked for?”
She gave a short nod and held out the envelope.
Gadai sat at a desk that he’d moved away from the draped window and tore open the flap. He inserted the thumb drive he found into his laptop and began perusing the accompanying single page of paper while it loaded.
The written instructions were somewhat more complex than he’d expected. Files were individually designated and various scenarios were laid out, each with a different release schedule.
“You’re following the second scenario?” Gadai asked.
Accorso nodded, perspiration beginning to form on her upper lip. “We were informed that Akhtar Durrani died by an authenticated email. When we didn’t hear from the client, we released file D-six on the third of the month.”
He nodded noncommittally. It would have contained the information on the Russian mole in Istanbul. The next file to be released, designated R-12, was scheduled for Thursday. What revelations did it contain? The identity of a highly placed informant? A list of bribes to foreign officials? Evidence of wrongdoing by the CIA’s administration? It was impossible not to speculate.
“And by ‘released’ you mean you simply sent it to the email address in the instructions.”
“Yes.”
“Have you looked at the files?”
“They’re encrypted.”
“Do you know who the client is?”
“He’s anonymous. He contacts me by phone once per week and gives me one of the pass phrases listed on the instruction sheet.”
Gadai scrolled through the list of files contained on the thumb drive, feeling a growing sense of elation. They had anticipated twenty or thirty. Instead there were hundreds. How much had Rickman known? What level of access had he enjoyed? Could Taj be right? Could this innocuous data-storage device contain the means to the Central Intelligence Agency’s destruction?
“Do you have backups of this information?”
“Yes.”
“In the office of the attorney who handles this client?”
“What about my daughter? You said—”
“I said she wouldn’t be harmed if you did as I asked. But you’re not answering my questions, are you, Isabella?”
He saw the ripple in her cheeks as her jaw clenched in anger, but it was a pathetic display. She was nothing more than a frightened woman who couldn’t even hold on to a husband. She would do what she was told.
“Are the backups in the lawyer’s office?” Gadai repeated. “Tell me quickly. Your daughter doesn’t have much time left.”
“No,” Accorso said, finally. “He may still have the original of the paper instructions because his secretary made this copy for me. The files are contained on the firm’s central computer. It’s backed up every night.”
Gadai looked up at her. “And do you have a way of deleting those files from both your mainframe and the backups?”
She didn’t answer immediately and he just stared at her, letting the seconds tick by.
“Yes. We have a way to do that. Sometimes we have clients who move their business and want their information wiped from our system.”
“That’s good,” Gadai said calmly. “Listen very carefully, Isabella. I want you to eradicate everything about this arrangement from your system. I want it to appear that it never existed.”
Surprisingly, she shook her head. “What happens when the client notifies my firm that the files aren’t being sent?
What will you do to my daughter then?”
Gadai smiled reassuringly. “There will be no such notification. Your client is dead. Forget any of this ever happened, Isabella. When the backups are deleted, your job and your daughter will both be safe.”
Of course, it was a lie. He couldn’t leave the woman alive. But his words had the intended effect and she relaxed slightly.
“Go back to work,” he said. “Tonight, have a glass of wine. Spend some time with Bianca. I promise you’ll never hear from me again. Once you’ve done what I ask, it will be over.”
CHAPTER 25
NEAR LAKE CONSTANCE
SWITZERLAND
DROP the weapon, Mitch. And don’t get your hands anywhere near that throat mike.”
Charlie Wicker slid forward in the tree stand and sighted through his scope. Rapp had modified his radio to constantly transmit on the frequency Gould had been excluded from. For good reason, it seemed.
Up to that moment, Wicker shared Coleman’s take on this op. Gould had crossed Mitch Rapp as bad as anyone ever could and was still breathing. If Wicker had been in the Frenchman’s position, he’d have fallen to his knees, thanked Jesus, and slunk away to the far corners of the earth in case Rapp ever changed his mind. This psycho just didn’t get it.
“We’re copying this, Mitch.” Coleman’s voice over the comm.
Through his scope, Wicker had a good view of the knoll they’d abandoned. The wind was blowing gently along it, causing the tall grass to wave rhythmically. About halfway up, something caught his eye. A patch that wasn’t swaying to the same music as the rest.
“I have movement,” he said into his throat mike.
It was the reason they’d surrendered the high ground for this tactical and literal hole. Anyone planning an assault on Obrecht’s property would want to take advantage of that knoll, but Gould’s anxiousness to put them up there had made Rapp suspicious. He’d expected a betrayal and that was exactly what he was getting.
