“Read it. Study the photos from the safe house. Look at the precision. Put yourself in the shoes of the people that were trying to get their hands on Rick. It was perfect.”
“I’m not saying it wasn’t,” O’Brien said, refusing to see thing in Rapp’s way.
“Now look at the other part of this. The same group of professionals fuck up, kill Rick, and then kill each other.”
“That’s what we saw on the tape. It’s pretty hard to argue with.”
“It sure is. The same cool customers that took down our safe house go completely mental just a few days later and manage to capture it on a camcorder and leave it behind for us to find.”
“Heat of the moment. Not everyone thinks as clearly as you do in pressure situations.”
“And some people are devious as all hell,” Rapp said. “We’re seeing what we we’re seeing because we want to. The alternative is fucking horrible. Rick is still alive and he’s spilling the family jewels.” Rapp moved back to his chair and said, “Can any of you honestly tell me that you weren’t relieved when you saw Rick die in that clip?”
They all shook their heads.
“Our lives got significantly easier.”
“Mitch,” Stofer said, “I kind of see your point, but these terrorists aren’t always the sharpest tools in the shed. That they screwed up and their failure benefited our larger strategic goals doesn’t mean we’re being duped.”
“I know,” Rapp said, “but I can’t shake the feeling that we’re not out of the woods. We need to take a top- to-bottom look at this. We need to figure what happened to all of the money Rick was spreading around. Where the hell is his laptop and do we have any idea what was on it? And the whole time we’re looking we’d better be asking ourselves one question.”
“What’s that?” Kennedy said.
“What if they wanted us to find that camcorder?”
“Oh, come on.” It was O’Brien. “This is so thin.”
Kennedy had her eyes on Hurley. She could tell he was taking a trip down memory lane, accessing his large database of real-life experiences. “Stan, what are you thinking?”
Hurley didn’t hear the question right away. His mind was elsewhere, thinking about the way the game used to be played. “I think Mitch might have a point… then again he could be totally wrong, but we can’t afford not to explore it.”
“I’m not sure we can afford to explore it,” O’Brien said. “The harsh truth is that Rick is dead and a lot of people want him to stay that way.”
Hurley started to grumble the way he did when he was about to get angry. After saying a few things to himself he said, “So our new protocol on shit like this is to stick our heads in the sand? That’s one of the dumbest fucking things I’ve ever heard.”
An outsider would be left to think that O’Brien would be wounded by Hurley’s harsh words, but they’d all worked with him so long they didn’t take the rebukes personally.
“Take this thing back to the beginning,” Hurley said, “and it looks like we were being played. I don’t think the Taliban are sophisticated enough to have done this. They may have played a role.. provided some manpower, they may have even taken down the safe house, but they sure as hell didn’t hire Gould. Whoever was behind this moved pieces around the chessboard like the Soviets used to do. They knew Mitch enough that they could dangle that information in front of him about the dog and he’d jump on it. They had to have been monitoring Hubbard, because minutes after he told Mitch where the vet’s office was, they put Gould into play and called in their corrupt police general to clean up the mess. That’s not the Taliban. Way too complicated.”
Stofer looked confused. “Are you saying the Russians are behind this?”
Hurley shrugged. He hadn’t thought that specifically but anything was possible. “I don’t know who’s behind it, but whoever it is, is one devious bastard. They set this thing up and played us. I’m inclined to agree with Mitch. Anyone who goes to that much trouble doesn’t leave the bodies and camera for us to find unless they want us to find them.”
Kennedy felt another headache coming and it wasn’t because she was mad at Hurley and Rapp, it was because she knew they were right. They had been suckered into thinking they had dodged a bullet. O’Brien started to argue with Hurley and Rapp. Kennedy stood and walked back to her desk. None of them noticed. She opened her top left drawer and grabbed bottle of Tylenol. She tapped out two little red pills into her hand and washed them down with a drink of water.
“Gentlemen,” she said. They ignored her, so she raised her voice until they all stopped talking and turned their heads in her direction. “We need his body. Until then we are going to work on the assumption that he is alive.” She saw O’Brien start to open his mouth and her hand shot out like a traffic cop’s. “Our official stance is that he’s dead. But unofficially, we are going to start digging, if for no other reason than to find out which intelligence agency was behind this.”
Rapp stood, feeling full of energy for the first time since he’d woken up in the hospital. He buttoned his suit coat and said, “And when we find out who was behind this?”
“We will send him a very personal message.”
Chapter 45
FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Joel Wilson didn’t mind that his entire career was in the balance. At least that was the conclusion he’d come to while shaving this morning. Rather than crumble, he took it as a challenge. Washington was a universally corrupt town and that corruption did not stop at the doors of the FBI. Wilson had been fighting it his entire career and although there were times like this, when he felt as if he was the only noble person in the building, that he took solace in the fact that there were men like Senator Cal Ferris who understood what was at stake.
Now the big question was, when was Ferris going to jump in and save him? The senator was cautious to a point and then he came out with both guns blazing-usually on TV. Ferris’s strategy was growing on him. Director Miller had made a tactical error when he recalled the team from Afghanistan. It was now documented that he had interfered in an important investigation and had plainly come down on the side of the CIA. This was the type of toehold that Ferris could use to drag Miller before the Judicial Committee when the time was right. And Wilson would be the star witness.
Wilson didn’t like playing down his relationship with Ferris. Especially this morning, when it seemed entirely possible that his career was about to suffer serious harm. Washington, in general, was sympathetic to Kennedy’s plight, but that would all change when the truth came out about Rickman and Rapp. The misuse of government funds was a serious crime, but the brazenness with which Rickman and Rapp had abused the trust Congress afforded to the black side of intelligence was nothing short of a major breach in national security. Wilson speculated that they were the tip of the iceberg. Others in the Clandestine Service were likely involved. Wilson’s next move if he stayed in his post was to look into John Hubbard. Was it possible that Mitch Rapp had killed Hubbard for fear that he was about to expose him? Could Rapp have been behind Rickman’s abduction and execution-again to protect himself, or to take all of the money they had been ferreting away?
Anything was possible when discussing these clandestine warriors. They were a bunch of degenerates. If they weren’t working for the CIA, a good number of them would be criminals. During Wilson’s fitful night’s sleep he considered whistle-blower status. While the idea, in a grand operatic sense, was appealing, it was also extremely risky. Martyrs in Washington were always vilified by one side of the aisle and sanctified by the other. It would be a tough slog, probably three to four years. In the end, either he would be disgraced and unemployable, with his pension gone, or he would receive a gigantic eight-figure judgment and become a minicelebrity with the antimilitary intelligence establishment. He’d probably even have a movie made about his gutsy decision to speak truth to power. The lure of Hollywood, a book deal, and publicly exposing the corruption at Langley was extremely tempting.
It wasn’t that Wilson lacked confidence in his abilities. He truly believed he was better than any three people in this town, but the CIA was more than three people. It was a building filled with individuals whose job it was to lie, cheat, and steal. They couldn’t be trusted to wage any kind of war in a fair, honorable way. No, Wilson feared, he might be able to use the whistle-blower statute to scare his bosses, but it wouldn’t intimidate the CIA for a
