"Do you think I give a s.h.i.t about the skiing, or how impressed the tree huggers were that you showed up?" Garret shook his head in disbelief. "I"m not kidding...you need to pull your head out of your a.s.s."
Ross"s face flushed with anger. "Stu, you need to watch your mouth."
"My mouth is the least of your problems. f.u.c.k." He sat back and frowned. "I was on the phone with our friend for nearly thirty minutes this morning."
"Who?"
"Our friend." Garret tilted his head and looked at Ross to see if he was putting two and two together. "The one you had wine with last night."
"Oh...that friend."
"Yeah...that friend. He"s p.i.s.sed. He says you"re delusional. You"ve somehow managed to rationalize this whole thing and wash your hands of it."
"I"ve done no such thing."
"He sounded pretty convinced."
"He"s not exactly the most stable person I"ve ever met."
"Do you have any idea how f.u.c.king serious he is?"
"There"s only so much I can do."
"I get the feeling your idea of what you can do and his are miles apart."
"I told him," Ross pointed his finger at Garret, "that I would do everything I could to help him, but in the end it would be up to you know who."
"No, I don"t know who."
"The president."
"Current or future?"
"Current."
"I seem to remember you also telling him if Hayes balked you would get Josh to do it once he took the oath."
"I did not."
"You sure as h.e.l.l did. I heard you. You said that between you and his father-in-law you would get him his pardon."
"Shhhh..." Ross held his finger to his lips.
Garret glanced over his shoulder at the two agents in the front seat and then looked back at Ross. "You f.u.c.king think they have us bugged? You really are out of your mind."
"In this town you never know."
"f.u.c.k...you"re paranoid."
"And you"re a rude little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Stu."
"Yeah well guess what? We"re not in high school anymore. I"m not trying to win any popularity contests. My job was to get you elected. And I did that."
"You weren"t the only one working on the campaign."
Garret shook his head and said, "Our friend told me that you actually said you thought you were making up ground in the polls and that you had momentum on your side. He told me you said we may have won the thing all on our own. You didn"t really say that, did you?"
Ross looked out the window yet again. "Stu, elections are a strange business."
"Mark, elections are my business. I"ve been running them and rigging them for over thirty years and I"m going to tell you right now you guys were dead in the water. You had about as much of a chance to win that thing as a Republican does the mayoral race in San Francisco...which is to say none."
"You don"t know that."
"Yes, I do, Mark, and you"d better f.u.c.king snap out of it, because I"m telling you right now our friend over in Europe is not the type of man you want to f.u.c.k with."
Ross had heard just about enough. "Next Sat.u.r.day, I"m going to be sworn in as the vice president of the United States of America. I think our friend should start thinking about who he he wants to f.u.c.k with." wants to f.u.c.k with."
"Yeah, well...he"s not your only problem, Mr. Vice President." Garret looked out the window and said something under his breath.
"What?"
"The FBI, Department of Justice, and CIA have scheduled a joint press conference for tomorrow morning at ten."
"Why?"
"The word on the street is that they caught the guy who was behind the attack on the motorcade."
"The guy behind the attack," Ross repeated with eyes as big as saucers. "You mean the guy who carried out the attack?"
"Or one of his a.s.sociates. There are a lot of rumors flying around right now. I don"t know for sure who they have."
"Does the media have the story?"
"Yeah, they"re all running it on the crawler, but they don"t have any specifics yet."
"s.h.i.t," Ross swore. "He told me he was going to take care of this. He told me last night when I talked to him."
"When I spoke with him this morning, the news hadn"t broke yet, and I don"t think he knew or he would have said something."
"Can this be traced back to us?"
"I"ve been thinking about that." Garret hesitated and then shook his head. "I don"t think so."
"You don"t think so...Your lack of certainty isn"t exactly comforting me."
"What do you want me to tell you? The only way we can be linked to this is through Cy, and he"s a very careful guy."
"He"d sell us down the river in a heartbeat."
"For sure, but if I know Cy, he covered his tracks."
"Have you talked to Marty?" Ross was referring to the attorney general.
"I tried, but he"s not taking calls."
"Well, he"ll take mine." Ross retrieved his mobile phone and turned it on. While he stared at the small screen waiting for it to come to life a contingency plan occurred to him. He was about to float the idea with Garret and then decided at the last second that it was best to keep it to himself. He would have to first find out what the attorney general knew.
24.
WASHINGTON, DC.
Rapp stood in front of the TV in his towel and brushed his teeth. The perky duo on the screen told him a warm front was moving into the Potomac River Valley. The forecast for Monday morning was clear skies and an afternoon high of fifty degrees. By tomorrow they expected the mercury to hit sixty. The morning TV anchors were doubly excited about this in light of the ice storm that had hit the city the previous Friday. Rapp cared about the weather only to the extent that he needed to know how he should dress. Other than that he tended not to get excited one way or the other. It was what it was, and there was nothing he could do about it. What he really wanted to know was how much play the upcoming joint press conference was getting.
The apartment didn"t have cable. It didn"t have much, in fact, other than the essentials. This was Rapp"s crash pad. His bolt-hole that he kept in Washington. His brother Steven was the only other person who knew about it. He"d shown it to his wife on one occasion. He brought her late at night so no one would see them, and he showed her how to enter from the back fire escape. The building was an eight-unit brownstone that his father had bought as an investment a few years before his death. Rapp was just eight years old but he remembered riding with him to the apartment on the weekends to clean the hallways and the laundry room.
The brownstone was located approximately a mile north of the White House in the Columbia Heights neighborhood only a few blocks away from the upscale Adams Morgan neighborhood. Columbia Heights was one of the many neighborhoods in the city that had fallen to urban decay in the sixties and seventies. Rapp"s father, a real estate attorney, had bought the place for next to nothing. It was four units up, four units down, st.u.r.dy as all h.e.l.l, and full of character. Rapp"s mother almost sold the place twice after his father had pa.s.sed away of a ma.s.sive heart attack, but Steven had been adamant that they keep it. Steven, just a year and half younger than Mitch, could spot trends even back then. They weren"t losing money on the brownstone, but it was a real pain. It was a rental property in a bad neighborhood; drugs, prost.i.tution-there"d even been a murder right in front of the building. There were lots of complaints by the tenants, late rent checks, and more evictions than they could count. Not the type of ha.s.sle a single mother of two from the suburbs needed in her life.
Steven persisted, though. He insisted that their father had said the building was a gold mine. As soon as the neighborhood turned around they"d make a small fortune. Steven even went so far as to put an ad in the paper for a new building supervisor. He dragged his mother down there on a Sat.u.r.day morning and helped her pick a nice old man whose apartment building was scheduled to be torn down by the city to make room for a section eight housing development. The man worked for free rent. He stabilized things and got good long-term tenants to move in. The neighborhood started to turn in the late eighties, and then the super pa.s.sed away in 1991 and they decided to sell each unit as a condominium. Their father had been right. Over a three-year period they sold all eight units and made a small fortune. One of those units was bought by an LLC out of the Bahamas.
The CIA had taught Rapp to be a careful man. He"d operated for years without an official cover in some very hostile places. He"d been ordered to do things by his superiors that he knew were illegal. The fact that this apartment was illegal in the eyes of the CIA didn"t bother him for a second. He"d been trained to live a lie. To deceive. To do whatever it took to survive and complete the mission without being caught. This apartment was a natural extension of what they had taught him.
Rapp walked into the bedroom. Spa.r.s.ely furnished like the rest of the place, it contained a queen-size bed with a wooden headboard that matched the nightstands and dresser. Rapp threw the towel on the end of the bed and grabbed a pair of boxers, white T-shirt, and black socks from the dresser. He put them on and opened the closet. There were half a dozen shirts and two suits all wrapped in plastic. Rapp put on a light blue shirt and the blue suit. He found a silver and light blue tie and held it up to the mirror on the back of the closet door. It worked. He knotted the tie and walked over to the dresser.
On top sat a metallic Rolex submariner, his Maryland driver"s license, a wad of hundred-dollar bills, a sleek Kahr 9mm pistol, a small conceal-to-carry holster, an SIM card, and a new cell phone that was partially dismantled. Rapp put the gun in the holster and placed it inside his waistband at the small of his back. He put the new cell phone in his left breast pocket and the battery and battery cover in the right breast pocket of the suit coat. He walked back out into the living room, turned off the TV, and looked out the window. It was 6:38 a.m. on Monday. The press conference was a little more than three hours away. Rapp grinned and wondered if they were still going to go through with it. They really had no choice. They had a person in custody. Someone they could blame for the attack. If they canceled the press conference they would look like fools, so Rapp was willing to bet that it would go off as scheduled at 10:00 a.m. Between now and then he had a few calls to make, but he didn"t dare do it from the apartment. He would leave the neighborhood and then make his calls.
25.
CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA.
Brooks had never set foot on the seventh floor before, let alone the director"s suite. She sat nervously in the small reception area with two very large men staring at her and one very small woman ignoring her. The men were ex-military for sure. They had short hair, and broad forward-slouching shoulders that were caused by too many bench presses and curls and not enough back exercises. They wore the telltale signs of a bodyguard on each hip. Gun most likely on the right hip and a radio and extra magazines on the left.
She"d gone through twenty-four years of life never noticing such things, and then she went down to the Farm, where the CIA trained their new Clandestine Service recruits. The Farm changed her forever. It was like someone lifted the curtain and showed her another dimension to life. There was nothing magical about it. They simply taught you that your survival one day would likely depend on how aware you were of your surroundings. Brooks thought back to the months she"d spent at the Farm and tried to remember what they"d said about insubordination and being threatened with obstruction of Justice.
Brooks looked up to see Special Agent Skip McMahon enter the small reception area. He was a big man with an even larger presence. He looked Brooks over from head to toe, frowned, shook his head, and then looked at the director"s gatekeeper.
The diminutive woman sitting behind the desk said, "Good morning, Skip. Go right in. She"s expecting you."
McMahon mumbled something unintelligible and entered Kennedy"s office closing the heavy door behind him with a thud.
Brooks looked down at the floor and wondered how she had let Rapp put her in this situation. Here was a man she"d been ready to strangle with her bare hands less than forty-eight hours before, and now he had talked her into putting her entire career on the line. He was Mitch Rapp, though. An honest-to-G.o.d, living, breathing legend. He had Kennedy"s ear, he had saved the president"s life, and it was said that Hayes would do anything for him. She"d worked with him in the field, one of the few covert operatives at Langley who could make such a claim. Even if it was more like watching him than working with him, the experience was invaluable. Rapp promised her that while things might be uncomfortable for a day or two, in the end she would want to be on his side. They"d found the man responsible for the attack on the motorcade, and they were going to go public with it. The CIA was actually going to get some credit for a change.
With her entire career ahead of her, Brooks thought this sounded like a pretty good deal. She would forever be linked to an important manhunt even if all she did was act like arm candy for Rapp. At least she thought it all sounded like a pretty good deal. Now she was starting to wonder. Special Agent McMahon had been predictably upset when Brooks had delivered the prisoner to him at Andrews Air Force Base. He"d been expecting Rapp, and he"d been expecting more than a shot-up, drugged man on a stretcher. McMahon must have asked her ten times where Mitch was, and every time she told him she didn"t know. And the truth was she didn"t. Brooks had left Andrews and returned to her apartment in Alexandria for the first time in almost a month. She turned off her phones, just as Rapp had told her to do and laid down for a nap. He"d told her all the action and lack of sleep would catch up to her and she would sleep like a baby. He was right again. She took a six-hour nap. When she woke up it was dark and her message light on the home line was blinking. She turned on her Agency-issued mobile phone, the one that she had been told in training to never turn off. There were thirteen messages. Each one was progressively worse. It started with her supervisor, then his boss, and then her boss and Jose Juarez, the deputy director of the Clandestine Service. He stated very clearly that he expected to see Brooks in Director Kennedy"s office at 7:00 a.m. on Monday or her relationship with the CIA would be terminated.
Brooks found the use of the word terminate terminate very unsettling. Especially when uttered by the head of the Clandestine Service. Interestingly enough, though, Rapp had predicted all of this. Even the 7:00 a.m. meeting. Brooks was turning all of this over in her mind when Jose Juarez came marching into the reception area. very unsettling. Especially when uttered by the head of the Clandestine Service. Interestingly enough, though, Rapp had predicted all of this. Even the 7:00 a.m. meeting. Brooks was turning all of this over in her mind when Jose Juarez came marching into the reception area.
Juarez was six feet tall with thick black hair and an even thicker black mustache. Born in Honduras, his parents immigrated to America when he was nine. Juarez graduated from high school in Miami and joined the Marine Corps. After four years of exceptional performance he was accepted into Officer Candidate School. Shortly after he had accepted his commission, the CIA discovered him and borrowed him for a little conflict they had in Central America in the mid-eighties. Juarez had performed so well the CIA offered him a permanent position.
Brooks had never served in the military but she jumped to her feet upon seeing the spy boss. Juarez"s jacket was already off, his top b.u.t.ton of his white b.u.t.ton-down shirt was already undone, and his sleeves were rolled halfway up his arms. He marched straight for Brooks and stopped two feet away, his thick black eyebrows scrunched into a frown.
"What in the h.e.l.l is your problem?"
"I"m sorry, sir. I don"t..."
"I don"t want to hear you"re sorry. I asked you what your problem is."
"Sir, if I may. Rapp told me..."
"Is Mitch Rapp your boss?" Juarez barked.
"No."
"I didn"t think so. Sit your b.u.t.t back down." Juarez pointed at the chair. "If the director wants to see you, I"ll let you know. My advice is that she fire your a.s.s and ask the FBI to investigate you." Juarez turned around and went back to the reception desk. He stuck out his hand and said, "Sheila, pad of paper and pen please." When the receptionist had given him what he wanted Juarez marched back to Brooks and said, "You may want to update your resume." He dropped the pad and pen in her lap and then entered Kennedy"s office.
Brooks looked down at the yellow legal pad and then up at the two stone-faced sentries. The receptionist finally acknowledged her presence by saying, "That Mitch Rapp is a real charmer, isn"t he?"
Brooks looked at the woman. She was approximately fifty. A little overdone. Hair a bit too red, and makeup a bit too heavy.
"Excuse me?"
"Didn"t you spend a month in Europe with him?"
"It was hardly a vacation."
The woman smiled and said, "I"ll bet."
Brooks looked down at the blank piece of paper, her mind struggling to reconcile the severity of the situation with this older woman"s l.u.s.tful fantasy. Brooks was way out of her league, without any sign of this thing turning out well for her. Sure, Rapp would be fine. He was Mitch Rapp. He had a career of successes he could point to, but she was just some little peon who would be labeled an insubordinate malcontent for the rest of her career. How could Rapp have possibly expected her to withstand this kind of pressure?
26.
WASHINGTON, DC.