American Assassin (13 page)

Sharif shook his head slowly and parted his lips to speak.

Rapp didn’t want to hear his lies. He squeezed the trigger and sent a bullet into Sharif’s chest. The Turk grunted and clutched his chest with both hands. Rapp stood, lifted his right arm again, as if he were checking the time, and squeezed the trigger three times in quick succession. The bullets spat from the end of the silencer, all three of them striking the arms dealer in the nose. The hollow-tipped rounds were designed to pancake on impact and triple in size. A pink mist exploded from the back of Sharif’s head. A good portion of the man’s brain was now in the bushes behind the bench. Rapp flipped the safety into the up position and moved off down the path without even the slightest bit of remorse.

CHAPTER
23
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

T
HE
Counter Terrorism Center was tucked away in the basement of the Old Headquarters Building at CIA. It was underfunded, understaffed, under decorated, underground, and pretty much isolated from all the major players in the building by both geography and attitude. Eight diligent souls worked there, and that was counting an overworked administrative assistant and Irene Kennedy, who was loosely attached to the group as an expert on all things Arab and Islamic.

Kennedy had spent her youth moving from one diplomatic post to the next, all of them in the Middle East and all of them save one in Arabic-speaking countries. Her father had diplomatic credentials but in fact worked for the CIA. Kennedy was reviewing a particularly bad translation that had been kicked downstairs by someone on the intel side of the building. The translation was so poorly done that Kennedy finally sat back and looked at her colleague Andrew Swanson. The tall, blond-haired Dartmouth grad was leaning against the wall of her cubicle tugging at his curly hair. He’d been up all night trying to make sense of the intercept.

“You keep pulling your hair like that and you’ll go bald,” Kennedy said without looking up.

Swanson pulled his hand away and tried to stand still. After a half minute he couldn’t take it any longer and said, “The thing doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s because the translation is wrong.” Kennedy scratched a few more notes in the margin.

“I knew it.”

Kennedy closed the folder and tapped it with her pen. “I’m going to need the tape.”

Swanson groaned in frustration. “Shit.”

She looked at the designation on the folder. “What’s the problem?”

“It’s frickin’ NSA.”

“I see that.”

“I’ll be lucky if I get the tape before the Fourth of July.”

Kennedy grabbed a Post-it note and wrote down a name and number. She stuck it to the front of the folder and handed the whole thing back to Swanson. “Call Kathy. Tell her I said she owes me and ask if she can messenger the tape over this afternoon.”

“And if she tells me to get in line like everyone else?”

Kennedy’s phone rang. She looked at the small, rectangular, monochrome screen and saw that it was Stansfield’s extension. “She won’t. I promise. Now run along and bug someone else. I need to take this.” Kennedy grabbed the handset and said, “Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning. Would you please come upstairs. There’s something we need to discuss.”

Kennedy instantly recognized the touch of intensity in her boss’s voice. The average person would not have noticed, but she knew him so well that she was instantly alert. “I’ll be right up.” She hung up her phone, locked her desk, and started for the door. On the elevator ride up she reviewed the various operations that she was currently running or involved in. There were fourteen active operations that she was associated with to one degree or another. It could be any one of them, or something entirely new. She really hoped it wasn’t anything new. She didn’t know if her marriage could take much more of her job. She barely saw her husband as it was.

Kennedy passed through Stansfield’s outer office. His assistant Meg was on the phone and motioned for her to go in. Kennedy entered and closed the door behind her. Stansfield was standing at the map table behind his desk reviewing a document. The corner office was devoid of any personal touch, with the exception of a family portrait of his wife and kids that he kept on his desk, and even that faced away from visitors. As Langley’s top spy, he was very cognizant of those who collected information and ferreted out secrets. Kennedy had done some digging three years earlier and came up with a long list of medals, citations, ribbons, and awards that Stansfield had received dating back to World War II. Not a single one of them was displayed, either here or at home. Thomas Stansfield was an intensely private man.

“Please sit,” he said without turning around. “There’s tea on the table. Help yourself.”

Kennedy went to the leather couch, opened the bamboo box, and selected a green tea. After tearing open the package she dropped the bag in a cup and filled it with steaming hot water. Stansfield crossed the office, a piece of paper in hand. He sat in the chair to Kennedy’s right, slid the sheet of paper across the cherry-inlaid coffee table, and clasped his hands in front of him.

Kennedy stopped dunking the tea bag and looked at the very top edge of the sheet. As someone who was on the operations side of the business, she was intimately familiar with what she was looking at. It was a secure cable. These sheets came in all day long from U.S. Embassies and Consulates the world over. They were sent using some of the most secure and classified encryption software mathematicians could design. The designation across the top told her not only the sensitivity of the information but where it had originated. This particular place of paper had come from the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul. Kennedy swallowed hard as her eyes raced through the body of text. Hamdi Sharif was dead. Gunned down in a park across the street from his house.

“Is my memory falling me,” Stansfield said, “or was I misinformed about the operational timetable?”

Kennedy read the cable again and went over the dates in her head. Finally, she looked up at her boss and said, “To the best of my knowledge Stan and Richards aren’t even in the country.”

“Where are they?”

“Greece.”

Stansfield sat back and ran his right hand over his black-and-blue-striped tie. “Where is Rapp?”

“In-country.”

He thought about that for a second. “When did he arrive?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“You’re sure.”

She nodded. “He checked in last night and then again this morning.”

“His time or ours?”

“It would have been around midnight our time.”

Stansfield looked out the window for a moment and then removed his black glasses. He set them on his lap and rubbed his eyes. Jumping to conclusions wouldn’t do him any good. Anything, of course, was possible when it came to a character like Sharif. He had made more than a few enemies over the years, but the notion that two separate camps had decided to go after him at the exact same time was a tough one to swallow.

Before Stansfield could say what was on his mind, his office door burst open. Max Powers, the Near East chief, strolled in without offering an apology. “Big news.”

“What now?” Stansfield asked.

“Our favorite arms dealer is no longer with us.”

Out of the corner of his eye Stansfield saw Kennedy withdraw the secure cable and fold it in half. “Which arms dealer would you be referring to?”

“Sharif, that fat Turk,” Powers said with a satisfied grin. “Someone blew his head off in Istanbul this morning.”

“His entire head?” Kennedy asked, taking the comment literally.

“The back of it at least.” Powers placed the palm of his right hand on the back of his head and tapped his bald spot several times. “I have a good source who works for Turkish NIO. Says someone plugged him up close. One in the heart and they’re not sure how many in the face, but more than one. Right here.” Powers tapped the space at the top of his nose between his eyes. “Tight grouping. Very professional. Blew the back of his head off.”

NIO was Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization. “Do they have any idea who carried it out?” Kennedy asked.

“Not a clue, but the rumor mill is already working overtime.”

“Candidates?” Stansfield asked.

“Usual suspects … Jews, Frogs, Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, and us, of course.”

“Russians?”

“My guy said they were thick as thieves. Also said he got a call from your old friend at KGB.”

“You mean SVR,” Kennedy reminded him of the Russian Intelligence service’s new name.

“Yeah, but, he referred to them as KGB. Same assholes as before. Just a new name.”

“What did Mikhail want?” Stansfield asked, referring to Mikhail Ivanov, the deputy director of Directorate S, perhaps the most ruthless outfit in the espionage business.

“Not happy,” Powers said with an emphatic shake of his head. “I guess he made some pretty heavy demands.”

“Such as.”

“He wants to know who did it, and he expects full cooperation. Said he’s going to make life very hard for anyone who doesn’t cooperate fully. Pushy bastard.”

“Any witnesses?” Kennedy asked.

“Not one,” Powers said with a grin. He looked at his watch. “The Turk’s been dead for five hours. It looks like it was professional. Five hours means the guy who pulled the trigger is long gone. They’re screwed.”

“Guy?” Kennedy asked.

Powers shrugged. “Just my guess. No offense, but it’s pretty much an exclusively all-men’s club.

Kennedy smiled to let him know she wasn’t offended.

Stansfield asked, “Your source … he’s good?”

“Great. Very dialed in.”

“Loyalties?”

“To the almighty dollar, but he prefers to do business with people he likes. We can trust him.”

“Keep me posted. I want to know what Mikhail is up to. If he starts swinging his velvet hammer, we might be able to win over a few more hearts in Ankara.”

“Good idea.”

“Anything else?”

“I’ll have my gang put together a full workup for you.”

“Thank you.” Stansfield looked to the door, letting Powers know he wanted to get back to his meeting with Kennedy.

As soon as the Near East chief was gone, Kennedy was on her feet. She made a beeline for Stansfield’s desk and grabbed the handset of his secure phone. She started punching in numbers, pausing for prompts and then hitting more numbers. After an interminable twenty seconds she accessed the voicemail. Kennedy listened intently to Rapp’s brief coded message and then slowly hung up the phone.

Stansfield twirled his glasses in his right hand and asked, “Well?”

Kennedy nodded, cleared her throat, and said in near disbelief, “It was him.”

CHAPTER
24

T
HE
handsome young man loosened his tie and nudged his beg toward the Customs desk at John F. Kennedy Airport. He casually, yet carefully studied the face of every officer who was checking passports and clearing people through customs. He had a U.S. passport and thus was spared the more stringent and crowded queues that were serving foreigners seeking to visit the United States. He chose this particular line, not because it looked like the fastest, but because the officer manning it looked to be the oldest and most uninterested of the six currently on duty. When it was his turn he stepped to the elevated desk and slid his passport across the cheap blue laminate surface.

The officer, a fifty-some-year-old gray-haired man, gave him a serious look and then glanced at the passport. He was all business. In a voice devoid of real interest he asked, “Did you have a good trip, Mike?”

The man gave a relaxed shrug and said, “Business.”

“What do you do?”

“Computer software. Workforce management stuff.”

The man asked a few more standard questions before getting back to his second one. “Workforce management … what’s that?”

“Sorry … scheduling software. They tell me workforce management sounds more cutting edge.”

The officer let out a small laugh while he applied the appropriate stamps. He closed the passport, slid it back across the surface, and said, “Have a nice day.”

“Thanks, you, too.” The software salesman headed for the main door and a connection to one of the domestic terminals. He was just another man in a blue suit, white shirt, and burgundy tie trying to earn a living. Other than the fact that he was tanned and fit, there was nothing that made him stand out. He found a stall in the men’s room outside the Delta ticketing desk. He carefully pulled back the magnetized liner on his black Travelpro carry-on bag. He deposited the passport for Mike Kruse along with a wallet stuffed with matching credit cards, a Maryland driver’s license, a bent and tattered UVA college ID, and a brand-new Blockbuster card.

He extracted a thin money clip with just one credit card, a Virginia driver’s license, and eight hundred dollars in cash. After closing the suitcase, he left the men’s room and proceeded directly to the Delta ticket counter, where a very enthusiastic young woman with a southern accent asked how she could be of service.

“I’d like to purchase a ticket on your next flight to Dulles.” He placed his driver’s license on the counter.

The woman was already pecking away at her keyboard. She nodded at her screen and then looked at the license. “Well, Mr. Rapp, we have a flight that leaves in one hour and forty-eight minutes.”

She went on to give Rapp the time of arrival and cost of the ticket plus tax. He simply smiled and slid four hundred-dollar bills across the counter. Three minutes later he was on his way with his change and ticket. He’d spent the last three days traveling across Europe pretending to be someone else. He was relieved to be back on U.S. soil, but was not naive enough to think that his problems were over.

He’d taken a roundabout way back to the flat after he’d executed Sharif, and he’d forced himself to run at a much slower pace than he was used to. A man running a sub-five-minute mile in any city of that size would look as if he were running away from something. Back at the flat, Rapp snapped on the latex gloves and wiped down and disassembled the Beretta. He placed the magazine, slide, and frame back in the worn leather suitcase along with the surveillance kit. He locked the case and put it back in the armoire under the pillow and blankets. The barrel and firing pin were tightly rolled up inside the running jacket and placed in a brown grocer’s bag. The rest of the clothes that he’d worn to the park, including his shoes, were placed in a second grocer’s bag.

Rapp took a fast shower and put on his suit. After taking two minutes to walk through the flat and make sure he wasn’t missing anything, he stuffed the two paper bags in his black duffel and attached the duffel to the top of his black, wheeled carry-on suitcase. Forty-one minutes after executing Sharif, Rapp locked the apartment and headed for the tram. The closest stop was three blocks away and Rapp had two major decisions to make.

The first was to find the right place to dispose of the two brown bags and to do it quickly. The second decision involved getting out of the country. Three different plans had been researched. The first was to simply fly out of the country, the second was to take the train, and the third was to rent a car. Rapp did not like the car rental as an option unless it was to be used to drive to Ankara, eight hours away, where he would leave it at the airport and grab a flight. Using the car to cross the border would create a different set of problems that he wanted to avoid. It put a name in a system that the police could trace. It would be a fake name, of course, but even the false identities that they had manufactured were to be protected. Heading straight for Istanbul’s airport would be the faster way out of the country, but it would also involve standing in close proximity to a large number of police, who he didn’t think had a description of him, but he couldn’t be sure.

A half block from the tram stop he ducked into a bakery and purchased a coffee, newspaper, and breakfast roll. He paid in liras and took the coffee black and in a to-go cup. Outside he removed the lid, blew on the hot coffee, and watched a nearby public garbage can. He had enough credits left on his tram card that he didn’t need to worry about buying a new ticket. The digital readout above the stop told him he had two minutes before the right tram arrived. Rapp put the lid back on his coffee and partially opened the black duffel bag. He extracted the more damning of the two paper bags and stuffed it under his left arm.

The hum of the approaching tram caused everyone to look, and that was when Rapp moved. He headed toward the flock of passengers who were waiting to board, pausing for a split second near the garbage can. He released the suitcase, grabbed the bag and stuffed it in the big circular receptacle. The tram stopped, the throng moved forward in unison, and ten seconds later they were all on their way to Sirkeci Station.

When they pulled into the grand old home of the Orient Express, Rapp searched the crowd for police officers who were showing unusual signs of alertness. There were none to be seen, which he took as a good omen. He exited the train and went straight to the nearest kiosk. Rapp had the departure times for Greece and Bulgaria memorized and knew that the express trains for both countries left in the evening. Hanging around the busy transportation hub for the rest of the day just to grab an express train was foolish. It was better to start working his way toward the border. A train was leaving for Alpullu in fifteen minutes. Rapp bought his ticket and made a quick stop at a bank of pay phones. He punched in the long series of numbers and then, in Arabic, left the coded message that would tell Richards and Hurley to not bother coming to Istanbul. Then, threading his way through the busiest part of the terminal, he slid past a trash bin and got rid of the second paper bag that contained his running gear.

After that he found the right platform, boarded his train, and took his seat. He pretended to read the newspaper, while keeping a close eye on the platform. When the train finally pulled out of the station, Rapp relaxed a touch with the comforting thought that he was putting distance between himself and the crime. Distance, he had been taught by Hurley, was your greatest ally and your number-one objective after taking someone out. As the train rolled through some of Istanbul’s less desirable neighborhoods, he thought of Hurley. The man would lose it when he retrieved the message.

Rapp spent the rest of the afternoon hopping westbound trains until he crossed the Greek border at two in the afternoon. The Greeks and Turks did not have good relations, diplomatic or otherwise, so for all intents and purposes he was safe. He was sick of riding in trains and listening to other people yammer, so he decided to rent a car. It would be returned at the Macedonia International Airport in Thessaloniki, and as long as he didn’t kill anyone in Greece, no one would care that an American by the name of Mike Kruse had rented a crappy little red, four-cylinder Flat.

Rapp pointed the tin can south and headed for the coast. As he neared the ocean he cracked the window and smelled salt air. The landscape before him didn’t look anything like the travel brochures he’d thumbed through back at the rental agency. The city of Alexandroupolis lay before him, an industrial fishing village with a few archeological sites of significance. Istanbul it was not. It was gray and brown and dirty and dead and it didn’t affect his mood one bit. Rapp was not the kind of person who allowed geography or climate to depress him—as long as he didn’t have to stay in one place too long. He rolled through Alexandroupolis just before sunset and continued up the coast for another fifteen kilometers until he found a small light blue seaside hotel. It was off season so the place was not busy and the rate was cheap. Rapp wheeled his bag straight into the reception area, which also doubled as the bar and dining room.

A heavyset, older gentleman waved to Rapp from behind the bar. Rapp walked over and the two of them worked out the details in broken English. The proprietor then held up a bottle of liquor and asked Rapp if he would like a drink. Rapp wondered for a brief second what Hurley and Richards were doing in Athens, and then decided that a drink was a great idea. He ordered a beer. The barkeep placed a bottle of Mythos in front of him along with a full bottle of ouzo and two shot glasses. He filled both glasses and slid one closer to Rapp. It was the beginning of a long night.

Three beers, and as many shots, into the evening, Rapp looked at the house phone and considered calling Hurley at his hotel. He dismissed the idea as a bad one and ordered some dinner. Fortunately, two college kids from England showed up and the bartender now had to divide his attention among the three of them. Four beers and a few more shots later, Rapp looked up and caught a reflection of himself in the mirror. It was at that exact moment that he realized a killer was staring back at him. He studied the reflection for a long moment and then held up a shot glass filled with ouzo. He toasted the man in the mirror and went to bed. He did not awaken until almost noon the next day.